Go Hyperactive or Get Chained to AdWords

Aaron Wall reports that even the best quality web directories are having their Google PR manually adjusted down reducing their ability to pass on link authority to entrepreneurs working to improve their search engine rankings.  This makes SEO more time and capital intensive.  Your choice is to go hyperactive with content, blogging, partnerships, etc or to become dependent on AdWords whose quality is declining.  Barriers to entry are going up folks.

I used to track 100s of general directories, and now I believe about 5 of them are showing their natural PageRank scores. The rest have been hand edited. Many of them were quite abusive and deserved to have their PageRank scores edited, but not JoeAnt, IMHO.

With so many of the clean link sources getting edited by Google, it is getting much harder for small businesses to compete with larger businesses for keywords on the commercial web unless they are ran by publicity whores. I am not sure if Google thinks that enhances information quality or helps mom and pop webmaster provide better services, but I guess we will see in a few years. The ironic part of it all is that if they force everyone to become marketing experts and PR agents to compete, then they undermine the long-term value of (and the need for) their paid search ads.