Web directory

A web directory, or internet directory, is a website offering a categorized list of websites.

The listings are typically organized into a hierarchical category structure, designed to cover all or part of the visitors’ interests. Each category contains subcategories focusing on more specific aspects of a given topic, as well as hyperlinks to the websites, each with a description.

Types of directories

A directory can be general, specialized (thematic), or geographic:

• general directories do not exclude any area of interest;
• specialized and thematic directories focus exclusively on websites or web pages dealing with a specific subject or intended for a particular audience;
• geographic directories, finally, can be both general and specialized; in both cases, they relate to a country, region, or locality.

Unlike search engines, directory listings are classified by humans. Three models are competing:

• The “corporate” model: a company adopts this activity to provide this service, often free of charge for general directories. Its revenue is based on advertising and/or the provision of ancillary services.
• The “community” or “collaborative” model: volunteers take responsibility for a section of the directory’s structure, based on their interests, skills, and availability. They select the sites included in that section of the directory, according to the project’s policy. The Open Directory Project is an example of a directory using this model.
• The “community-wiki pre-populated by bot” model: a bot scrapes content from published public data to pre-populate the directory with indexed data, and the community takes over to classify and re-index the informational and commercial content. As with Wikipedia, the vision is to rely on the knowledge of each visitor. The AboutUs.org model is an example of a directory using this model to list existing domain names worldwide.

Evolution and trends

With the development of search engines such as AltaVista and Google, web directories have lost their appeal for users, particularly general directories. These directories struggle to compete with the speed and ease of use of modern search engines. For example, in 2014, Yahoo shut down its Yahoo Directory service. This directory was the very reason for the company’s creation twenty years earlier [1].

Today, web directories are regularly used for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) by both professional and amateur SEO specialists because they allow them to obtain hyperlinks pointing to their websites. Obtaining these links adds value to these sites from the perspective of search engines, which can improve their ranking in search results.

Beyond that, a well-moderated and maintained modern web directory still allows users to find quality sites because they have been accepted into the directory after human verification, unlike search engines which are based on an algorithm.

After numerous abuses, search engine engineers have revised their ranking algorithms and place less importance on this referencing technique, except for high-quality specialized or general directories.

(Includes texts translated and adapted from Wikipedia by Nicolae Sfetcu)