I know the directories doesn't work in that way some directories submit instantly some take week and some even months but the question is if I submit to 400 directories at once for a newly launched website can it put me in trouble?
A link to your site is never going to put you in trouble because google knows that you don't always have control over them. i.e if a competitor put some bad links to your site nothing would happen because google knows it might not have been you who put them there.
I would not recommend adding too many directory links for a new site. Google is good at identifying patterns that do not represent natural organic links. You also want to vary your link text and ensure that not all your links point to the homepage.
It won't hurt your site, but it probably won't help much either. It'll be like lottery tickets. Maybe one will pay off big, some a little, and the rest will be worthless. You might be better off doing some research in your niche and general directories trying to find the well respected directories and submitting to them. Your time will be the same, but you'll get better results.
I just wrote a blog post on What Bing Considers as Unnatural Links. The source is a Bing blog post. They state that they certain link behavior can cause a manual review of a website. The behavior that applies here is: "The number of inbound links suddenly increases by orders of magnitude in a short period of time" Google has been doing this for years.
I dont think any of the search engines would care. My main concern would be whether or not the directories are any good. No point if they are all rubbish.
as you noted yourself,it could takes months before all of your submits were accepted or rejected.no harm in submitting that many at one time
Nothing will happen! If Free dirs, you will be accepted in maybe 100 or approved in the next 1 year. If approved in all, means they are are nonsense-spammy directories. Google will take maybe 500 yrs to find you from 10000000000 links per category. In anyways, you don't get affected.
WTF! i got a red rep for saying u gonna get 400 email wasn't that true? crap bag guy who sent me rep!
Directory only for submitting url's, But not really waste your time. Effective to use social networks like twitter, etc,,, More Backlink & Usable content it's good
Submitting to directories is not a waste of time. Ive not used twitter and never will, but isn't it just a load of people telling a load of other people what they are doing throughout the day? Like im eating a sandwich, i watched the latest episode of, i have flu, im going for a bath. Thats what people do on it isn't it? As i say, ive not used twitter, but it seems that its done in vain, whatever they call it, tweeting? twitting? twerping? chirping? They even mention twitter on our national news, it gets more mentions and better coverage than murders, what a weird world we live in, lol