justdave - 7:57 pm on May 23, 2006 (gmt 0)

Google is notorious for not reporting the actual links pointing to a site. Don't rely heavily upon that information to gauge the inbound links. You should also use MSN and Yahoo to get a better evaluation.

As far as free directories/article submissions, I agree to a point. I wouldn't spend a ton of time submitting to hundreds of free directories and article submissions. I would include them in the linking strategy. That's just my opinion.