I manualy submited my websites in about 500 free (non recirpocal) web directories...and try to guess what ... I only can see 4 back links after 2 weeks in Yahoo/MSN !!!! and those backlinks from those web directories didn't modified my pagerank or my position in serps in a big way! If I am doing blog posting I am reciving much more traffic because of my anwrrs like "okay" "i agree",etc, (okey just joking, maiby even submit something like : I agree with you , I also use this software...blah blah") and much more back links them submiting to web directories.What do you think?!
Its called blog spam and if blog spam didn't work, people wouldn't do it. Not sure I'd go down that route, though - too easy for all those comments to just be removed.
Well if you had 4 directories go through and approve your listing and then have time to get shown in MSN/Yahoo in 2 weeks then thats good. Most directories that you will submit to can take months to get approved to be listed then on top of that could take months to be shown on the SE. Your pagerank will not update until all of ours do. It basically happens every 3 months +/- whenever they want to. Your position probably wont change with a just a few links. Is this a new site? If so your position will jump up and down and up and down and then be completely removed then you get mad then it will come back go up go down, ect.
Don't you see how the poor directory site owners are so overworked! Many of them claim thousands of submissions just sitting there waiting for their approval as they toil their fingers to the bone working 18 hours a day approving sites to their directories. Of course you could always kick them a couple of bucks and some ben-gay and they will get you in right away! But don't blame the poor overworked directory owners. You know how long it takes to approve a directory submission?
I personally don't like many online directories. They simply aren't that effective. I had the exact same experience, manually submitting to over 400 directories with little results. I started getting good results when I started emailing actual webmasters. Blogs are pretty cool, but as said above they can be removed, so the traffic may not be sustained. Once your site is in a directory, it tends to stay there.
The problem is what kind of site you were submitting. From your willingness to use blog spam, I assume (though I might be wrong) that it is a kind of site that has little to no chance of being approved in directories. Unless you let us know more details about the site, I can only speculate, though.
Same happen to me but i do not quit i start writing articles(alright my english is bad) joining forums spamming blogs etc
It all dependent upon the directories, you will find that the majority of them will bury your link deep in their database and wont pass on any pr. Look for do follow blogs with decent page ranks, add keyword rich text to your name and actually comment on them don't spam so your link won't get deleted.
Did you get confirmation of submission from all 500 directories informing you that your site is included?