What is a web directory and what is a search engine and what are there functions ?

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Both Web Directories and Search Engines give internet users access to sites on the World Wide Web, however they are different in the way they operate and how they are designed.

A Web Directory list Websites in Categories - Web Directories are often compared to yellow pages or telephone business directories, this is a fairly good comparison. If you are searching for a website in a Web Directory you will normally select a category that you are interested in and the websites that belong to this category will be displayed, sometimes with the option to narrow your search further. Sites within Web Directories are normally submitted by the site owner with a description that they feel is appropriate, these site descriptions will probably stay static for as long as the site is listed. When you perform a text search in a web directory it will normally return the most appropriate website based on the site description.

A Search Engine works by sending a small program (Often Called a Robot or Spider) to visit websites, this program collects all the information that is displayed on the websites and retains this information in a database. When a user inputs a text query into a Search Engine it will return the most appropriate page based on the content of the website or page the robots have visited.

There are benefits to both the Search Engine and the Web Directory format.

A good Search Engine will be able to return accurate results based on the content of a website or page - as a search engine actually reads and knows what the web page is made up of it has more data to rank results on - a Web Directory would not have this amount of data, normally just the site description.

A good web directory would return a result based on site owners descriptions and has the facility to match sites to categories.

Happy Online 14th July 2003

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