Why Directories?
Search engines are nice, but they lack the quality work of real people. Directories list websites that have been compiled by human beings, who generally write good descriptions for each of those websites.
Compared to search engines, directories lack (by many, many times) the quantity, but are much higher in quality. Maintaining a directory is extremely time consuming work, which is why there are very few large ones.
Some people think that the most effective directories are ones which are given a more narrow scope than the entire web; these are often edited by people who are experts on the subject of their directory.
The Big Three
The three largest web directories are the
Open Directory Project,
Yahoo!, and
Looksmart, and these are often called the “Big Three.”
The next largest directories are a fair bit smaller.
The Open Directory Project
Originally begun in response to complaints about the Yahoo! directory, the Open Directory Project was first called Gnuhoo. Today it is owned by
Netscape, itself owned by
AOL.
Despite being owned by a large corporation, it remains an open directory. What this means is that anyone can apply to edit a category (but their application may be rejected), and that anyone can use the data from the directory themselves.
That first fact is what has made the Open Directory the largest directory on the Internet, now including over four million listings. The second fact means that the data from the directory is used by many other websites.
For instance, the
Google Directory, the
AOL Directory, and thousands of other web directories are built using the Open Directory.
Google enhances it by ranking listings according to
PageRank™ rather than alphabetically, as the Open Directory does.
Thumbshots™ shows the data with website thumbnails,
iBoogie displays the data in a folder-tree,
WebBrain displays the data visually,
Antarctica Systems displays the data as a
map, and
IncyWincy provides direct access to the search engines of websites listed in the directory.
Disney’s GO Portal
The
GO portal, owned by
Disney, used to have its own directory. After it closed in 2000, former editors of the directory started the
JoeAnt and
GoGuides directories, which both opened in 2001.
In October 2003, there was a disagreement amongst the heads of GoGuides. The heads that did not own the domain name started
Skaffe, which begun with all the same data that GoGuides has. In other words, the directory has split, and the results of this are yet to be determined.