I also get 0 traffic from directories. I also stopped submitting to them. I only submit to a few good ones and that's it.
If you keep submitting based on page rank you won't get much traffic. Try submitting to directories that sends traffic. Trust me there are directories that sends decent traffic. Do a little reasearch first.
Not sure what you meant by good ones I have links in 1. DMOZ - Sends no traffic. 2. Skaffe - Sends no traffic at all 3. GoGuides - Sends no traffic 4. WowDirectory - Sends nothing 5. Avivia Directory - Sends Nothing 6. Google Directory - Sends Nothing However, those ones above are considered "good ones"! So submitting to "good ones" won't send you much traffic either!
How many directories had you submitted to? Free or paid? How many approved? As I know, bidding directories always bring some traffic.
Submit to the right ones, most of them even as bigged up as they offer very little traffic, those that have been around for five years or more and don't rely on other directories to provide traffic can be well worth while. We've certainly never had any complaints.
Ah.... a fascinating insight into the inner workings of the cyber snake oil merchants aka as the pay for inclusion directory industry. So what these fine gentlemen are saying is that people (other than webmasters) do not use these directories and that the only benefit is in SERPs. But (here is the real clever bit) these directories want the gullible webmaster to part with their hard earned money because they expect you to believe that search engines put some weight (other than infinitesimal or a penalty) on a website being listed in these worthless directories. As well as eliminating the possibility of bad links I guess this is another advantage of having hundreds of empty categories.
I track referral traffic pretty closely. From directories I tend to get decent traffic only from 2yi.net (68 visits last month). Other than from them, I find only tiny amounts of directory traffic in the referral stats of Google Webmaster Tools. But that's not the only reason to submit to directories. Any honest link counts to the search engines, even though each individual link may add only infinitestimal value. Multiply that times thousands, and those links begin to matter. That's why I practice regular directory submission. Directories have contributed greatly to the over 16K links I show in Yahoo Links. When you start building up those quantities of white-hat links, you will get some love from the search engines. And just think of those thousands of links pointing to your site with keyword-rich anchor text.
Empty categories is a far better choice than having them full of crap like some directories I could mention. Stop trolling.
I would not know you from a bar of soap, and while respecting your's and all peoples views it would be nice if you did not bottle all people here with the snake oil tag.
The vast majority of the pay for inclusion directories are offering a worthless product and the term "snake oil merchant" as applied to those promoting these products fits perfectly. If you are not a pay for inclusion directory owner or an owner of one of the 0.01% of pay for inclusion directories that are not worthless then those remarks were not directed at you and I apologize if you were offended.
Directories never send you any traffic. I have not met anyone who browses directories in order to find websites. They just search in google. So if you are looking to get traffic from directories forget about it. The only traffic you get will be the time when the directory owner views your site to approve it. But don't stop submitting to directories. They provide backlinks with anchor texts which are necessary for good google rankings.
The reply or reading your comment was not personal, there are many here in this section who have great talent in what they do, and most here are adapting and making large efforts into improving the directory scene. I can not speak for others but to date i have spend nearly 2 years 24/7 hours and 2oK building a directory that is still not complete and will spend that again and more before i may if lucky see one cent, the purposr of this directory has one focus, and is dedicated to do one thing, send traffic to the listed site, and remains my number one focus in everything i do and plan for, i also many others taking similar and or views that produce the same outcome will pm my url you make your own call, ( still in beta / contruction stage )
You clearly don't know what your talking about, or perhaps you should have said, 'most' directories don't send you traffic, not all.
The fellow is being realistic Jamie, people these days use search engines to find sites. If they were to use a directory to search for a site it is almost certain that they would not use pay for inclusion directories of the type that that is in your sig.