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Yup I fully understand this, I belive that they are high authority sites with needed content and deserve high rankings.

I just found it weird that they were once spread out below the average 'Joe' website but now seem to be clumped together in their rightly deserved positions.

I find it entertaining trying to explain to client that it is near off impossible to rank in top 5 for <service><location>style queries while sites like this exist, the information I provide them just does not sink in.</location></service>

Thank you for your reply.

Has anyone noticed a bump for Directory style websites in SERP after the recent Panda/Penguin updates .

I am new to SEO but after monitoring one website in particular I have noticed that the site has dropped around 8 positions for location based queries and directory style sites such as yell.com, freeindex.co.uk, thompsonlocal.com all have seemed to moved up ever so slightly even above competior sites, which from memory were all below competior sites in previous search queries .

I wonder what your thoughts are on this, or its possible that my site in question has been affected and I need to carry out more work to improve its positions back to its original.

Your thoughts are welcome.