Serial Number: 01
Branch Number: 02
Main Categroy: Web Directory & Search Services
Sub Category: Web Directories
Web Directories - a more thorough look
As mentioned earlier in post 0101, Web directories are normally huge lists of sites categorized usually by topic. In this article, we discuss in more details the organization and structure of popular directories. Most of the exmples will be based on the following sites:
- The Open Directory Project(ODP): http://dmoz.org
- Google Web Directory(An edited commercial clone of ODP): http://dir.google.com
- Excite Commercial Directory: http://www.excite.com
- Galaxy Web Directory: http://www.galaxy.com
- The WWW Virtual Library: http://vlib.org/
- FSF/UNESCO Free Software Directory: http://directory.fsf.org
Web Directories can be categorized themeselves! However, in the age of computing revolution, the boundries between categroies begin to blur and become more vague. It became harder to categorize anything actually as we once could. However, there are few ways that can help categorize what can be called a Web Directory:
By Directory Specialization
Some directories are general ones such as the ODP and the Google Web Directory. Such directories will usually try to list all sites of the world (a goal that seems impossible to achieve) and categorizse them usually by topic. Go to www.galaxy.com / dmoz.org / dir.google.com and you will usually see a list of very broad general topics. Now if you click any of the topics, another list of categories will appear. Only this time the categories are more specific and related to the main topic you've choosen. You might even find a small list of sites along with descriptions on them. That list will be of general sites covering a wide area of the main topic you selected. Now, descriptions are what makes directories special. Usually those descriptions will not be extracted by some software program. Instead, it will be an edited paragraph descibing the content of the website.
Other directories choose to specialize in some topic. Take the FSF/UNESCO Free Software Directory for example. They maintain a list of free software along with some detailed information about the software and where you can get it (a website link usually!) You may find a directory specialized in listing sport related products and companies in Alabama soon (if there is no one already there!) ChefMoz for example is a directory (informative mainly but it includes links if available) specialized in restaurants: http://chefmoz.org/
By Directory Focus/Flavor
Although it might seem strange at first, I like to categorize directories by their Flavor! That is not of course Lemon or apple flavors! Some sites are more into a "commercial" flavor. They give you commercial entities working on the area you're searching for and then list other sites. This is different from commercial vs non-profit directories. It's more into what the directory targets, what kind of websites does it focus upon. Excite is one of those commercial flavored directories. Others are software flavored, and so on.
By Directory Listing Type
Some directories just give you the site link and a short description about it. This is usually the general ones as it is hard to keep detailed information about large numbers of sites (the ODP currently has about 5.1 million sites) Other directories however choose to provide more information about the listing (One might consider the sourceforge.net softwre tree as a directory listing the projects and their summary pages. It provide details about each project more than just a short desc)
By Directory Editing Mechanism
Some Directories are voluntary based (edited by volunteers such as ODP), Others are edited by employees (such as Google's Directory) and some are based on software categorizing the sites then human editors check the listings (google might be using this kind of approach)
Useful Sites and Directories:
Web Directories:
The Open Directory Project(ODP): http://dmoz.org
A voluntary based not for profit web directory. This directory provides a free dump of its data to the public beside a searching facility, and of course, the directory interface itself. Sites are not ranked in the ODP. Instead, if a site is superior to its counterparts in the same category, it is "cooled" to indicate it is special. Even this is discouraged to be done oftenly. However, it is usually based on the content of the website which makes it realistic. A great place to start your information mining process! a useful article about the ODP can be found in wikipedia at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Directory_Project
The Google Directory: http://dir.google.com
This is built upon the ODP's data but, as a commercial entity, Google's directory is updated more often. The searching facility is much stronger in google (a company legacy I guess) However, one downfall of it is that it is commercial, meaning it relies on profit from advertisements so some of the sites are ranked higher only because they pay more and not because their content is really more related.
The Galaxy Web Directory: http://www.galaxy.com/directory
The site is great even it does not contain as much links as google but it's humanly edited in a way to avoid adult and hate content, by very strict on relevance and it displays those who pay on a separate section called Featured Listings. A Good point to start from
The Yahoo! Web Directory: http://dir.yahoo.com
Although one of the oldset, and it's also one of the best, commercials make it hard to concentrate using the yahoo interface in general. However, everyone who've been in the internet before 2000 knows yahoo and its directory! No hands, just dive!
About.Com InfoDirectory: http://www.about.com
I like to call it InfoDirectory because it is more into information than sites. It does list sites but within articles about a certain topic. I usually recommend this for people with no goal to go and wanting to spend some time getting info about certain topics. Be cautioned however! I started out looking for info on computer internet technologies and ended up looking at the personal weblog of someone (It was a nice blog after all!) so this can take you to places were you can spend MORE time than you really want! It's fun however, and can be very useful if used well
Specialized Directories
http://www.educational-software-directory.net
http://library.albany.edu A great research Directory!!
http://www.vcanet.org American Virtual Community of Associations
http://groups.google.com Google's Groups' Directory
http://www.cyberfiber.com directory to USENET and alt. Newsgroups
http://www.epistemelinks.com/ EpistemeLinks includes over 18,500 categorized links to philosophy resources on the Internet and has several additional features
Finally: I hope this article helped the newbies, amused the fathers and didn't bore the masters!
Please give me your opinion about this article if you read it so that i can avoid mistakes and make this series better and more useful to everyone. Comments are open to everyone and you opinion, suggestions and comments are all welcomed.
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