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From: Jorge Vulpes
Date: 07-25-07 19:24 pm
Subject: Web Directories vs Search Engines - A Comparison
ID: 1
Message: Web Directories vs Search Engines - A Comparison
By Jorge Vulpes
Web directories and search engines are terms with confusing elements. People who are familiar with the terms might say that these terms are not confusing at all. But this article is written to give a comprehensible view of the two terms to those people who do not have the clear idea. It’s a comparison between web directories and search engines.
Web directories are lists of web pages according to categories. The web sites listed have reviews about their contents with the name and link of their site. You can find a category and then navigate to sites listed in that category. On the other hand, search engines use key words or phrases to find out websites. The search is done on the titles, names, contents and sometimes in the inner pages depending on the type of search engine. The result is listed and you get many web sites’ links to get going with.
Web directories are normally run by people not computers and they do the review and the categorization before listing the site in the directory. The categorization is done after seeing the whole pages; it’s not done using a few key words. A site is usually included in one category only. Search engines are run by computer programs. They use crawler like programs to visit web sites and the pages within the sites. The results are then listed and presented to the surfer. It works on key words or phrases that can be included in any part of the web site.
Now, if you want to get your web site listed in the web directories, you need to go through certain procedures. You have to submit your site’s name and other data in order to get your site listed. The editors of the web directories will go through your site, categorize it, write reviews about it and lastly list in the directory with the review. There are many types of submission as some are free and some are paid submission. But in the case of search engines, there’s no need to submit the site to the search engines. The search engine’s “crawler” would find your site and index it. The search engines index pages in order to include the pages in the search result. You need to have your site linked to other sites in order to be found by the search engines. You don’t need to pay anything to the search engines; it’s free to be indexed.
The web directories provide a lot of traffic to the sites. The reason behind submission to the directories is to increase the traffic to the sites. People get their site listed in paid directories in order to get better traffic. Search engines do provide traffic to the sites but the sites have to be listed in the front page. The web sites research and take many actions to get better page rank. Search engine optimization is an issue of great importance to the web site owners.
The confusing part of web directories and search engines is both are sometimes found in the same site. You can find both in Google and Yahoo. Now, Google is mainly a search engine but it has the web directory where search is also available. Yahoo was a web directory at the starting and now it has its own search options. You can also find search option in the directories to find a specific topic. You can browse in to a category and then hit the search option to find your specified type of sites. Google has a directory tab at the top of the result page, where you can find your search result in the web directory. This option is also available in Yahoo.
Both the web directories and search engines provide links of the websites to the surfers. Now, if you know what a web directory and a search engine are and the mechanism of their work; you will have better idea where to look for and search your required query.
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Search Engines and My Web Site - David Bailey 09-08-06 13:10 pm
Web Directories vs Search Engines - A Comparison - Jorge Vulpes 07-25-07 19:24 pm
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