The very first search tool was a search directory. A search directory is simply a listing of websites sorted into categories. The first nationally recognized search directory was Yahoo.
Yahoo began as a hobby by David Filo and Jerry Yang who were electrical engineering students at Stanford University. They started listing websites on a web page in February 1994 as a way to keep track of their favorite sites on the Internet. Eventually, Jerry and David’s list became so long that they broke the list into categories. When the categories became too full, they developed subcategories. This core concept was what became the Yahoo directory.
Yahoo remained a search directory until 2002, when they made the shift to crawler-based listings (search engine) for its main results. Today the Yahoo search directory still lives; however, it is a small part of the Yahoo portal page.
In most cases, a search engine is a better choice; therefore, Yahoo uses a search engine as its main search tool (listed at the top of the page). It is hard to even find a link to the Yahoo Directory which is dir.yahoo.com. Google also offered a search directory until it was dropped early in 2011.
A search directory is a list of websites sorted by categories and maintained by humans. To get a new website added to a search directory, the site’s webmaster must submit a request to the directory. A human will process the request by evaluating the site’s content. The site’s home page will then be added to the appropriate category. Only the home page of a site is listed in a directory and typically, only in one category.
There is typically no charge to have a website listed in a search directory; however, most directories offer premium services for a fee, such as listing a website in multiple categories, or having a website listed in bold.
When you are looking for information that falls into a distinct category, a search directory can be very effective.
For example, when looking for a list of colleges and universities that offered a graduate program by distant learning in the Yahoo Directory here is the process:
- Go to dir.yahoo.com
- Click on “Education”
- Click on “Distance Learning”
- Click on “Colleges and Universities”
- Click on “Graduate Programs”
The result is a list of 40 colleges and universities that offer a graduate degree by distant learning. While this may seem like a small number of links, they are “high quality” sites because each was qualified by a human.
