Web Directories

What is the difference between a web directory and a search engine?

A Web directory organizes Web sites by subject, and is usually maintained by humans instead of software. The searcher looks at sites organized in a series of categories and menus. Web directories are usually much smaller than search engines' databases due to the human factor.

There are two ways for sites to be included in a Web directory's listings; either the site owner can submit the site to the Web directory, or the directory's editor(s) will eventually come across that site. The purpose of each one of these sites is to provide an organized and categorized sets of Web sites that have been evaluated for usefulness. Each one of these is worth looking for to see if you might get lucky.

Web Directories are wonderful tools of exploration, below I outline the two main ones I used for this project.

Here are some other web directories

Usage in this Project

Name: Yahoo! Directory
Access: Yahoo! Directory
Frequency: Once a month
Information: I went into the directory as a starting off point for my project. It is what launched me into a variety of other blog/organization sites out there. To begin, you can conduct your own search or browse the directory by category, for instance, look at the compiled list of Business and economy directory. You can also utilize Advanced Directory Search if you can.
Query:

  • While many of them was not helpful, just having one useful category, the Coffee one linked me to 30 sites that were all great. They included a wide spread of sites from blogs to organization's official sites.
  • Two other categories I found useful were: Starbucks Coffee and Consumer Opinion

Evaluation: (6/10) Once you find the right directory, it yields a lot of good sites and information. It is a great launching pad for research on a particular topic. However, it is not really up to date news information. Rather, it is good for conducting background research.
Miscellaneous: Did you know that BIT330 is in the directory??

Go here for an index of all the tools I used.
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