Time is much better spent building a portal site that does more than the stand-alone general business directory model.
Directories are fine and even if the directory is listed as a bad neighborhood by the freaks at Google the link will help your site in various ways.
I have competitors who have PR 3 with no links other than from directories so directories must be OK.
I always start a new site in the directories when it's ready to be seen and is a very easy way to get a site on top when there is little to no competition!!
Probably not, if its just submissions to normal directories. If its one of those submission services that claims to submit you to 250,000 places, then still probably not a banning but clearly a waste of money. You actually have to push it quite a bit to get banned, penalised is a bit easier, but to be completely banned by them (in most cases) takes some doing. Crafty,shady,up to no good will bring a banning. Super hard, fast, not natural promotion will bring a penalisation.
Of course Directory Submission will improve your page rank and you will get lot of visitors and also will improve your alex rank
They aren't because Google see it not as a natural linking (as in "look what cool articles this website has"), but instead just a "friendship" linking (as in "you put your link in my site, I put yours in mine"). Where's the organic linking here? It isn't.
I never see directories show up in a google search. How will get traffic from them if they have no content? I am new and do not understand.
I think it helps a little with serps and it does seem to help with pagerank. I think writing articles helps out the most
Directory Submission Helps In Getting Good PR.. U should never submit blindly in all the directories bt try to submit in Quality and relevant Directories..