[cbscreative]

I think directories are good for local search and industry specific search provided they are regarded as authoritative. However, the value of directory links is waning. One interesting trend that Google is using is measuring the user response to sites. If your site has more "pull" (users staying and loading more pages), then you will do much better in search engine ranking. This does make it more difficult for a new site to get ranked than the old system, but the advantage is that it rewards quality of content. Creating unique, quality content still wins even though the search engine algorithms have changed.