Differences between search engines, directories, and FAA sites.

There are very strong differences between search engines and directories. There are also some submitters that claim FAA or free for all sites should be placed in the same category of search engines and directories, in which I disagree. FAA sites are usually listings virtually dumped into groups that really afford limited exposure and often time limits are placed on entries so they might not be listed for any length of time. FAA's results are virtually void on search engines. Check out the section on Free for all, as you will be amazed how worthless they are, however  many submission services use them as there backbone of submission sites!

Directories are huge databases of collected web sites that are sorted and reviewed by humans (example Yahoo, Open Directory) and each web site is viewed, summarized, and placed in an exact category. Directories take longer to compile but are far more detailed than search engines and usually offer the most complete information system on the Internet.

Whereas search engines (example Google, Alta Vista) generally spider (a software program that actually visits an url address) and retrieve most of the web sites information from either text or meta tags. Then they classify each site from the information gained. Some search engines allow for manual data entry but they are generally less categorized than directories.