General Directories vs Niche Directories vs Regional Directories vs Business Directory
Webmasters prefer general directories than search engines because they can always find a suitable category for almost any kind of website. For end-users general directories are useless. Most of them close a site when they see a directory because they think it's a parked domain. This makes general web directories good for link juice only. Very rarely you'll get visitors from general directory links. General directories are harder to maintain, this means that often they contain spam and low quality sites.
Niche directories are more useful, a quality niche directory can be a valueable resource for end-users. Generally they have less spam, and they provide the same link juice as general directories. Regional directories are alike niche, except they don't focus on a niche, they focus on a limited area, province, country, teritory. While providing the same linking benefits as general one, they are good for end users too.
Conclusion: Nowadays everyone and his dog runs a general web directory and even worse, a spammy general web directory on a dropped domain with PageRank. If you want quality links for your site go for niche and regional directories. Submit to only those general directories that are ranking well in Google and have high page rank, just like our site www.web.at.ua!