I think they help quite a bit. I have a site doing 500 uniques per day and up till this month, the only thing I've done is directory submissions over the past seven months. Along with that, the last PR update, the main page was PR4 and 102 inner pages were all PR3.
You can spend 5-10 minutes per day adding to about ten new directories and over time, they really add up. To *what* degree they help, one can only speculate, but they sure haven't hurt me in the least bit.
I brought a client's site for an extremely competitive term, from mid-60s in google to page 1 in four months by doing directory submissions only, with four keyword phrases, where 75% of the submissions were for the primary keyword.
I've brought another client's site from nowhere in google to page 2 in the serps for a local competitive term, just by directory submissions.
Granted, buying 4-10 PR6/7 links might have worked better, but they didn't have an ongoing bud
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