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Directories like Yahoo, DMoz and Zeal are human
edited indexes. Usually they are organized in hierarchal categories.
Directories
are important in three ways.
- Search Engines and portals
like Google use them in their Search Results.
- Search engines
use them as a starting point for Spidering the web
- Since
search engines use Link Popularity as a factor in their
algorithms, links from important directories
like DMOZ, Yahoo,
and Zeal contribute to a higher Ranking
- The directories
are used by your potential visitors.
Search Engines and portals like Google use major directory results
in their search results.
When you do a search in Google, you see that some results are
from the Google directory. This directory is totally dependent
on the database of DMOZ. DMOZ is a voluntarily driven directory.
Listed in DMOZ means being listed in Google.
Search engines use major directories as a starting point for
spidering the web.
Search engines have robots called spiders that crawl the web
for new and renewed web pages. They have names like Googlebot
and Slurp and listen for you to call them. Where do they start?
In an index. So, when you call Googlebot he starts his crawl
on the web in the DMOZ index.
Since search engines use link popularity as a factor in their
algorithms links from important directories like DMOZ, Yahoo,
and Zeal contribute to a higher ranking.
Link popularity is a measurement or way
to tell a search engine if your site is important or not.
Google, for
example, counts
the number of incoming links to a web page. Web pages
from important sites are more valuable. It’s
like a recommendation from someone whom you really
trust or
one who is an expert
in the
field. DMOZ for Google and the Yahoo index for Yahoo
are their best recommendations! So be listed in them.
The major directories are used by your potential visitors.
Although the results of the Yahoo index are mixed with ‘normal’ search
results by default, you can also search the directory
alone. This is also the case for Google and the directory
results of DMOZ are searchable as a stand-alone as well. While
DMOZ is not
a very popular directory on its own, it can be in other
cases. For example in our home country, the Netherlands,
Startpagina.nl
is the main directory index for Ilse, a Dutch search
engine
with a market share of about 20%. Startpagina as a
directory has a
bigger market share with 142 million searches a month.
Being
listed in Starpagina.nl gets visitors from Ilse and
from Startpagina as well!
Here is a list of the major directories
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