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General directories and search engines for finding information, news, and photos on the Internet.



Web directories :



 
  • Alleba

    Alleba is a Philippine search engine. It was created in 2001 by Filipino web designer Andrew dela Serna. Alleba started as a project to index the best Filipino websites in a directory format and is one of the first local directories behind those such as Yehey and Tanikalang Ginto. In 2004 it was named the WWW Virtual Library of the Philippines. Alleba has since then helped Philippine websites gain more exposure on the Internet.

  • AboutUs.org

    AboutUs.org is a wiki Internet domain directory. It lists websites along with information about their content. As a wiki, AboutUs allows Internet users to add entries or modify information.

    Ray King, Jay Westerdal, & Paul Stahura founded AboutUs in 2005. Later in 2006 a small staff of five people in Portland, Oregon developed out the site, United States. The staff has since expanded to more than thirty people and two continents with an office in Lahore, Pakistan. In May 2007, Ward Cunningham, developer of the first wiki, joined AboutUs as its chief technology officer.

    AboutUs.org attracted at least 1.4 million U.S. visitors in July 2008.

  • ArticleAlley

    ArticleAlley is an online article directory of various subjects and topics. Authors can post free articles to the directory database without any membership. The articles are reviewed by a group of several editors; and, if they meet ArticleAlley’s editorial guidelines, the articles are then available for public view. ArticleAlley provides an RSS feed for each author to syndicate his or her articles throughout the Web. The content of most articles can be republished for free.

  • Best of the Web Directory

    Best of the Web Directory is a commercial web directory providing websites categorized topically and regionally. Headquartered in Uniondale, New York, BOTW also maintains offices in Orange, Texas, Rocklin, California, Studio City, California and Highland Beach, Florida.

    BOTW allows site owners to submit their websites for an expedited review, and commercial sites are required to pay for the review. The company currently offers a choice of either a one time fee or an annually recurring fee for an editor to review the site for possible inclusion into the BOTW Directory. Review fees are non-refundable, and only sites that meet the editorial guidelines are listed.

    Additionally, BOTW offers advertising in the form of category sponsorships. Category sponsors are highlighted at the top of their applicable category, and also receive enhanced placement in the BOTW search results. While sponsored listings undergo the same editorial review as directory listings, if accepted, the advertiser is granted more flexibility in category selection and more control over their title and description.

  • Biographicon

    The Biographicon is an online directory of biographies. The site also shows connections between individuals covered, and explains the circumstances under which they met. It is based on a wiki model of writing – anyone may edit or amend biographical entities.

  • Business.com

    Business.com is a business search engine and web directory and pay per click advertising network. It includes Work.com, a business-to-business community publishing platform where experts share advice on common business topics in the form of how-to guides.

  • Intute

    Intute is a free Web service aimed at students, teachers, and researchers in UK further education and higher education. Intute provides access to online resources, via a large database of resources. Each resource is reviewed by an academic specialist in the subject, who writes a short review of between 100 to 200 words, and describes via various metadata fields (such as which subject discipline(s) it will be useful to) what type of resource it is, who created it, who its intended audience is, what time-period or geographical area the resource covers, and so on. In early June 2008 Intute provided 123,381 records. Intute is not to be confused with a simple search engine - it is more like a hand-built directory of 'the best-of-the-web, for academics'.

  • Iraqi Virtual Science Library

    The Iraqi Virtual Science Library is an Iraqi Virtual Library providing Iraqi academics with access to recourses via the internet. The library, launched in May 2006, initially provided access to more than one million articles from 17,000 electronic journals and other resources. Access to this knowledge is considered vital for the rebuilding of Iraq as it will improve the curriculum which suffered under Saddam Hussein's regime. The library is part of the overall plan to improve access to information in Iraq.

  • JoeAnt

    JoeAnt is a human edited directory offering "to provide a directory of quality sites for Internet users". Created by a group of a dozen former Go.com (Disney) volunteer Go Guides, JoeAnt was born of the desire to provide relevant results in a wide variety of topics, and seeks to work by forming a 'community' of editors where anyone interested can join in.

    Volunteer editors are registered automatically and do not have to go through a review process. The sites they submit go to a higher-level editor regardless of topic. This allows the submitter to get a quick review of the site without the likelihood that the reviewer is a competitor.

  • LookSmart

    LookSmart (NASDAQ: LOOK) is a search advertising network and management solutions company based in San Francisco. LookSmart provides search advertising products and services to text advertisers, as well as targeted pay-per-click search and contextual advertising via its Search Advertising Network. For publishers seeking to create their own branded vertical advertising networks, LookSmart also licenses and manages search ad networks using its award-winning AdCenter platform. LookSmart is one of the five founding members of the IAB Click Measurement Panel.

  • Open Directory Project

    The Open Directory Project (ODP), also known as Dmoz (from directory.mozilla.org, its original domain name), is a multilingual open content directory of World Wide Web links. It is owned by Netscape, but it is constructed and maintained by a community of volunteer editors.

    ODP uses a hierarchical ontology scheme for organizing site listings. Listings on a similar topic are grouped into categories, which can then include smaller categories.

  • OrganizedWisdom.com

    OrganizedWisdom.com is a human-powered search service for health (or human search engine) launched in alpha test in October 2006 by Steven H. Krein and Unity Stoakes. As of July 2008, the project is in beta test. It differentiates itself from algorithmic search engines like Google, as well as other directory sites like DMOZ and Yahoo by tracking and building hand-crafted result sets for many of the currently popular health search terms.

  • RPG Gateway

    RPG Gateway, part of the RPG Nexxus site network, is a human-edited global niche directory, specializing in role playing games and related content. The purpose of RPG Gateway is to provide a single resource listing all RPG and RPG-related sites for gamers. Its focus is on pen-and-paper RPGs.

  • SAYNOTO0870.COM

    SAYNOTO0870.COM is a UK website with a directory of non-geographic telephone numbers and their geographical alternatives.

    The website, which primarily started as a directory of alternatives to 0870 numbers (hence the name), also lists alternatives for 0844, 0845, 0871 and even 0800/0808 freephone numbers.

    The vast majority of numbers are submitted by visitors to the website, but the discussion board also offers a place for visitors to request alternatives numbers if they are not included in the database. Some companies that advertise a non-geographic number will also offer a number for calling from abroad - usually starting +441 or +442 - this number can be used within the UK (removing the +44 and replacing it with 0) to avoid the cost of calling non-geographic numbers. Some companies will also offer a geographic alternative if asked.

  • Timway

    Timway (simplified Chinese: 添达; traditional Chinese: 添達; pinyin: Tiān Dá) is a web portal and directory primarily serving Hong Kong. It is designed for searching web sites in Hong Kong. The web sites in each category are sorted according to their popularity and freshness instead of alphabetical order. Timway supports web search query in English and Chinese, and indexes web pages in both languages. It was founded by Tim Yu. Its primary business is the sale of advertising on the Timway.com search portal. It cooperates with Yahoo for the search engine marketing business. Also, a range of Internet services are also provided including discussion forum, news and education courses.

  • VFunk

    VFunk also known as (VF), a professional human edited global niche web directory, that specializes in listing and categorizing dance music & urban lifestyle related web site listings.

    VFunk directory was founded in July 2004 by dance music promoters Ryan Clark and Conner Lawrence with a view to provide a one stop resource for people with a passion for dance music. Vfunk is a spam free & search engine friendly directory. Volunteer editors search the internet for sites with original content and also consider user-friendliness and web standards when reviewing each site. VFunk offers listings for both commercial and non-commercial sites.

  • Virtual Library museums pages

    The Virtual Library museums pages (VLmp) form a leading directory of online museums around the world. The resource was founded by Jonathan Bowen in 1994, originally at the Oxford University Computing Laboratory in the United Kingdom. It is supported by the International Council of Museums (ICOM) and Museophile. The main site moved to London South Bank University and is now hosted as a wiki on Wikia.

    The directory is organized in a distributed manner by country with around twenty people in different countries maintaining various sections. Canada, through the Canadian Heritage Information Network (CHIN), was the first country to become involved. The MDA maintained the United Kingdom section of museums, now the Collections Trust.

  • Virtual Museum of Computing

    The Virtual Museum of Computing (VMoC) is an eclectic collection of links and online resources concerning the history of computers and computer science. It includes links to other related museums, both real and virtual, around the world, as well as having its own virtual galleries of information. A particular feature is the early computing pioneer Alan Turing, among others.

    This virtual museum was founded by Jonathan Bowen in 1994, originally at the Oxford University Computing Laboratory in the United Kingdom. It is now supported by Museophile and also forms part of the Virtual Library museums pages, hosted at London South Bank University and mirrored around the world.

  • WikiCity Guides

    WikiCity Guides is an on-line publisher providing local content on places, events, and people which could be of interest to those associated with any of the 22,000 U.S. towns it covers. It serves these communities much like a collection of city guides, yet as a wiki, any of its readers are allowed to contribute content. With over 13 million pages, WikiCity Guides ranks as one of the largest wikis in the world. WikiCity Guides encourages, but does not require users to register to contribute.

  • WikiPilipinas

    WikiPilipinas (formerly known as Wikipiniana) is an online, free content website which bills itself as a combination "non-academic encyclopedia", web portal, directory and almanac for Philippine-based knowledge. Like Wikipedia, it contains various articles on Philippine-related topics. Unlike Wikipedia, many of the articles cover topics that would otherwise be deemed unencyclopedic by the stricter Wikipedia. The service for example, promotes the concept of original research and eschews the larger encyclopedia's neutral point-of-view principle.

    Conceived in late 2006 by Philippine publishing magnate Gaspar Vibal, WikiPilipinas (as Wikipiniana) officially went live on June 12, 2007 with several thousand Philippine-related articles forked from the English Wikipedia. Its name was officially changed from Wikipiniana to WikiPilipinas a few weeks later on the 7th of July. The service was formally launched at the 28th Manila International Book Fair in late August of the same year.

  • World Wide Web Virtual Library

    The World Wide Web Virtual Library was the first index of content on the World Wide Web and still operates as a directory of e-texts and information sources on the web. It was started by Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of HTML and the Web itself, in 1991 at CERN in Geneva. Unlike commercial index sites, it is run by a loose confederation of volunteers, who compile pages of key links for particular areas in which they are expert. It is sometimes informally referred to as the "WWWVL", the "Virtual Library" or just "the VL".

    The individual indices, or virtual libraries live on hundreds of different servers around the world. A set of index pages linking these individual libraries is maintained at http://vlib.org/, in Geneva only a few kilometres from where the VL began life. A mirror of this index is kept at East Anglia (UK). A VL specific search engine has operated for some years and is now (VLsearch) located on its own server at vlsearch.org.

    The central affairs of the Virtual Library are co-ordinated by an elected Council. A central index (the 'Catalog') is maintained and joint services provided by the Council on behalf of the association.

  • Yahoo! Directory

    The Yahoo! Directory is a web directory which rivals the Open Directory Project in size. The directory was Yahoo!'s first offering. When Yahoo! changed to crawler-based listings for its main results in October 2002, the human-edited directory's significance dropped, but it is still being updated. The Yahoo! Directory offers two options for suggesting websites for possible listing: "Standard", which is free, and a paid submission process that offers expedited review. Payment is required when suggesting a commercial site.

    Yahoo! provides both a search engine and a directory service, and the directory is searchable separately from the rest of their search engine results.



 
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Web directory :



 

A web directory or link directory is a directory on the World Wide Web. It specializes in linking to other web sites and categorizing those links.

A web directory is not a search engine and does not display lists of web pages based on keywords; instead, it lists web sites by category and subcategory. Most web directory entries are also not found by web crawlers but by humans. The categorization is usually based on the whole web site rather than one page or a set of keywords, and sites are often limited to inclusion in only a few categories. Web directories often allow site owners to directly submit their site for inclusion, and have editors review submissions for fitness.

RSS directories are similar to web directories, but contain collections of RSS feeds, instead of links to web sites.


 



Scope of listing :



 

Most of the directories are very general in scope and list websites across a wide range of categories, regions and languages. But there are also some niche directories which focus on restricted regions, single languages, or specialist sectors. One type of niche directory with a large number of sites in existence, is the shopping directory for example. Shopping directories specialize in the listing of retail e-commerce sites.

Examples of well known, general, web directories are Yahoo! Directory and the Open Directory Project (ODP). ODP is significant due to its extensive categorization and large number of listings and its free availability for use by other directories and search engines.

However, a debate over the quality of directories and databases still continues, as search engines use ODP's content without real integration, and some experiment using clustering. There have been many attempts to make directory development easier, such as using automated submission of related links by script, or any number of available PHP portals and programs. Recently, social software techniques have spawned new efforts of categorization, with Amazon.com adding tagging to their product pages.


 



Human-edited directories :



 

A human-edited directory is created and maintained by editors who add links based on the policies particular to that directory.

Human-edited directories are often targeted by SEOs on the basis that links from reputable sources will improve rankings in the major search engines. Some directories may prevent search engines from rating a displayed link by using redirects, nofollow attributes, or other techniques. Many human-edited directories, including the Open Directory Project and World Wide Web Virtual Library, are edited by volunteers, who are often experts in particular categories. These directories are sometimes criticized due to long delays in approving submissions, or for rigid organizational structures and disputes among volunteer editors.

In response to these criticisms, some volunteer-edited directories have adopted wiki technology, to allow broader community participation in editing the directory (at the risk of introducing lower-quality, less objective entries).

Another direction taken by some web directories is the paid for inclusion model. This method enables the directory to offer timely inclusion for submissions and generally fewer listings as a result of the paid model. They often offer additional listing options to further enhance listings, including features listings and additional links to inner pages of the listed web site. These options typically have an additional fee associated, but offer significant help and visibility to sites and/or their inside pages.

Today submission of websites to web directories is considered as a common SEO (search engine optimization) technique to get vital back-links for the submitted web site. One distinctive feature of 'directory submission' is that it cannot be fully automated like search engine submissions. Manual directory submission is a tedious and time consuming job and is often outsourced by the webmasters.


 



Bid for Position directories :


 

Bid for Position directories or also known as bidding web directories, are paid-for-inclusion web directories where the listings of websites in the directory are ordered according to their bid amount. They are special in that the more a person pays, the higher up the list of websites in the directory they go. With the higher listing, the website becomes more visible and increases the chances that visitors who browse the directory will click on the listing. There are PHP scripts (free and paid versions) for the management of bid for position directories include phpLinkBid (paid), Link Bid Script (free), Astanda Directory Project (ADP), and a modified link bid version for phpLD (phpLinkDirectory).


 




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