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

[Jackie]

Search directories - are a categorized collection of information about Web sites. Rather than containing information from Web pages, it contains information about Web sites. The most significant search directories are owned by Yahoo! (dir.yahoo.com) and the Open Directory Project (www.dmoz.org).

Directory companies don’t use spiders or bots to download and index pages on the Web sites in the directory; rather, for each Web site, the directory contains information such as a title and description. The two most important directories, Yahoo! and Open Directory, have staff members who examine all the sites in the directory to make sure they are placed into the correct categories and meet certain quality criteria. Smaller directories often allow people submitting sites to specify which category should be used.

Here’s how to see the difference between Yahoo!’s search results and the Yahoo! directory.

• Go to www.yahoo.com
• Type a word into the Search box
• Click the Search button

The list of Web sites that appears is what Yahoo! calls the Yahoo! Search results, which are currently provided by Google. But notice the Directory tab at the top of the page; or, underneath some of the search results, you see a line that says something like More Sites about: Affiliate Marketing. Click either the tab or link, and you end up in the Yahoo! Directory. (You can go directly to the directory by using dir.yahoo.com.)

Note to the Administrator:

I am so sorry if I may have been flooding your forum, but since SEO is my passion, I just thought to feed your members the important topics on starting a career on SEO. If you find that I look too spammy, I would gladly receive infractions from you. Thank you so much!

Jackie

[Manny]

Good point there, Jackie! So does that mean that other directory sites index their directories the way others do? Is it also possible to place advertisements on these directory sites? If so, do you have any idea on how much would it cost the advertisers?

[Charles]

Originally Posted by Jackie

Note to the Administrator:

I am so sorry if I may have been flooding your forum, but since SEO is my passion, I just thought to feed your members the important topics on starting a career on SEO. If you find that I look too spammy, I would gladly receive infractions from you. Thank you so much!

Jackie

There's nothing to worry about being infracted, Jackie! In fact, it is an honor to the forum to have an SEO Speededededededt like you. Everyone is eager and looking forward to your next posts.