Google’s best contact with the Internet at large, Matt Cutts, slipped into the DigitalPoint Forums to drop a juicy tidbit about PageRank into the discussion, says Search Engine Roundtable.

Sayeth Matt on DigitalPoint:  “Here’s what I’ve said about directories recently:

“Q: Hey, as long as we’re talking about directories, can you talk about the role of directories, some of whom charge for a reviewer to evaluate them?
A: I’ll try to give a few rules of thumb to think about when looking at a directory. When considering submitting to a directory, I’d ask questions like:
- Does the directory reject urls? If every url passes a review, the directory gets closer to just a list of links or a free-for-all link site.
- What is the quality of urls in the directory? Suppose a site rejects 25% of submissions, but the urls that are accepted/listed are still quite low-quality or spammy. That doesn’t speak well to the quality of the directory.
- If there is a fee, what’s the purpose of the fee? For a high-quality directory, the fee is primarily for the time/effort for someone to do a genuine evaluation of a url or site.
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Those are a few factors I’d consider. If you put on your user hat and ask “Does this seem like a high-quality directory to me?” you can usually get a pretty good sense as well, or ask a few friends for their take on a particular directory.”

As far as the toolbar PageRank, I definitely wouldn’t expect to see it in the next few days. Probably not even in the next couple weeks, if I had to guess.

Webmasters should be glad that Matt comments as often as he does. Think about Google without him. Recently I’ve found it impossible to get a comment out of their press people at all; I can only imagine the Apple-like lockdown that would take place on webmaster-relevant information that Matt dispenses if he moves on from the Googleplex.