I wanted to discuss how many free directories one should submit to a month before a red flag gets raised by Google's algorithm as too many? Anyone have any experience with this?
If submitting by hand then i would not put any limit of any kind, its just a personal view and some will disagree. If it was some sort of fast submission service then maybe it would be wise to limit, but then again i ask myself why?? as i see some sites that gain huge backlink numbers in just a few short months. In a nutshell, i have no clue what is correct but personally i dont reach a number and then think il stop for the month. Sometimes i wish the Mythbusters would appear on the internet as there are endless Myths about what is correct or not.
Personally i don't think it matters... at the end of the day you may submit a load, doesn't mean they will all get approved on that same day... hence the inclusion (and further more the indexing of those backlinks) will occur over a staggered period of time.
I have submitted to thousands of directories for many sites. Free directories take time to get approved so just go for it I have never seen a penalty. And why should there be? You are placing your self in the various internet directories - that should be done. Why are you not in them already? I give some credence to too fast link building for a young site eg under one year. But when any penalty is lifted you are in thousands of diretories with many back links. A free PR0 directory today may be a popular PR 5 in a few months - if google ever updates again http://www.omg-1.com
If you're talking about getting sandboxed you should just expect this penalty for a new site to begin with. Else just buy a couple powerful links, avoid tons of new backlinks, and you might achieve your goal and avoid the sandbox.
I used this tool here to get indexed quicker when i created my directory, got indexed in about 24 hours, no sandbox for me