One of the problems with web directories can be the PageRank of internal pages - or rather the lack of it.

Directories are often advertised with reference to a high home PageRank but there is little point paying for a listing if the internal page it is on is not crawled or cached by the search engines.

Link Book Web Directory is an interesting example where the home page has a lower PageRank than the internal pages - it is PR4 and many of it’s categories are PR6. That makes it pretty good value at $34.99 for a featured listing, especially as it offers 10 extra deeplinks on the details page.

A quick way to check the PageRank of the internal pages of a directory is to use iWebtool.com visual pagerank checker. This will quickly display the PageRank of the destinations of all links on a page.