I just the backlink tracker here. I have done several directory submissions but i only show 8 google backlinks. Is this normal?
It's not only normal, I've yet to see anyone able to actually explain it. Try Google's Webmaster Tools, or just use Yahoo (Site Explorer) to get better back link results.
My experience is that Google lists about 3% of my inbound links, compared to the larger list you can find via Yahoo.
Go to Google Webmaster tools and see what backlinks are listed. If there are some missing that you know about, check the page is indexed by google, and consider giving it (the page linking to you) a little link love from a another site (such as a relevant blog post comment) to raise its chances of being counted. One site I have yahoo - 14,000 Google.com link:domain - 100 Google webmaster tools - 6000 Don't fret too much about the links not being shown, if the page that links is listed in google, it's just a reporting issue.
It's bizarre but it happens, I have 429 backlinks on yahoo, but only like 8 on google. I personally think that google's system discounts links based on keyword density and how concentrated a niche is (both unintentional on my part). Or maybe google's not so great after all
Google only shows a portion of your backlinks to prevent reverse engineering the algo. If they gave us all the data they use to rank sites it would make it too easy to duplicate other sites techniques to manipulate the serps.