Sublime Directories

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Sublime Directories

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!