| Primarily developing better understanding of what search
engines actually do and trying to educate users that there are very
strong differences between search engines and directories. There are
also many businesses that claim FFA or free for all sites should
be placed in the same category of search engines and directories, in
which I disagree. FFA 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.
FFA's results are virtually void as results onsearch engines.
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 an exact category. Directories take
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 Webcrawler,
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.
Back to Search
Engines in Review |