incrediBILL - 8:49 pm on Mar 15, 2011 (gmt 0)

I think the real clues I'm finding are from some of my competitors that didn't get hit as hard which elements seem to count more than others.

However, being in the local directory biz, the main thing I've noticed is that it appears Google dialed up local sites ranking over directories and Google Places is definitely pushing many local directories down into an extinction level event.

Some insanity stuff like a PR 1 page for a single company ranking above a PR 4 representing 20+ companies, obviously more useful for the user searching on this topic, until you push 20 of those low PR local sites up to the top and you have now replaced the PR 4 page representing 20+ companies with SERPs that now do the same.

Bye bye directories.