Web directories

From ArticleWorld

A web directory is a WWW-based directory that compiles and classifies links to other web sites. In general, web directories take their content from the submissions of website owners, with each submission going through the review of a specialized editor. Most of them also offer a search engine to search among all of its categories.

Debates

The main debate that arises in the case of web directories is the one regarding the overall quality of the links. Since the content of the web directories is edited by humans, it would be expected to have more relevant results than a regular search engine. However, this has been brought to some debate. For example, the Open Directory Project has been quite criticized for focusing quite a lot on the quantity of links provided and less on their quality. Another popular web directory, the Yahoo! Directory, has been criticized for treating commercial clients preferentially. Nevertheless, web directories do remain a viable alternative to search engines when the user knows exactly what he is looking for.

The other problem involved here is that the content of web directories is often used by web search engines without any sort of real integration. This negates their main advantage, the one of offering an intuitive classification of the websites. Some measures are taken against this, including better integration from non-directory websites through tagging.