Tom's Subject Directory & City Building Fan Site
| site search by freefind |
Web Directories
- ABCSearch [New Window]
- ABCsearch meta-searches About, AltaVista, LookSmart, Yahoo! and Fast/AllTheWeb. Browse or Search Categories.
- AOL Search [New Window]
- AOL Search allows its members to search across the web and AOL's own content from one place. The "external" version, the above link, does not list AOL content. The main listings for categories and web sites come from the Open Directory (see below). Inktomi also provides crawler-based results, as backup to the directory information. Before the launch of AOL Search in October 1999, the AOL search service was Excite-powered AOL NetFind.
- Direct Hit [New Window]
- Direct Hit's award-winning technology provides highly relevant results for any Internet search. By analyzing the activity of millions of previous Internet searchers, Direct Hit determines the most relevant sites for your search request. Direct Hit empowers millions of Internet users to automatically organize the Internet as they search. Direct Hit is a subsidiary of Ask Jeeves, Inc.
- Excite [New Window]
- Excite Has become a meta search service , as well as access to human-powered directory results from LookSmart. Excite was launched in late 1995. It grew quickly in prominence and consumed two of its competitors, Magellan in July 1996, and WebCrawler in November 1996. These continue to run as separate services.
Excite has over 14 million monthly unique users and is the leading personalization portal on the Internet. - IWon [New Window]
- Backed by US television network CBS, iWon has a directory of web sites generated automatically by Inktomi, which also provides its more traditional crawler-based results. iWon gives away daily, weekly and monthly prizes in a marketing model unique among the major services. It launched in Fall 1999.
- Look Smart [New Window]
- LookSmart is a human-compiled directory of web sites. In addition to being a stand-alone service, LookSmart provides directory results to MSN Search, Excite and many other partners. Inktomi provides LookSmart with search results when a search fails to find a match from among LookSmart's reviews. LookSmart launched independently in October 1996, was backed by Reader's Digest for about a year, and then company executives bought back control of the service.
- Lycos [New Window]
- Lycos claims to have indexed over 90% of the Web and is another example of search engine combined with directory. The directory tends to be more leisure orientated.
- Bing [New Window]
- Microsoft's search site draws on three different databases to provide you a variety of results for your search queries. DirectHit is used to list the most popular sites just below a couple of MSN's featured sites, Inktomi is used to search the web and RealNames is used to find corporate sites. Using a mix of search methodologies in theory is a great idea. In reality some of the best resources won't be found by a MSN search.
- NBCi [New Window]
- NBCi is a human-compiled directory of web sites, supplemented by search results from Inktomi. It was formerly known as Snap but had a name change in late 2000. Backed by US television network NBC, the site's future is in doubt, as NBC announced wide-spread layoffs in April 2001
- Netscape Search [New Window]
- Netscape Search's results come primarily from the Open Directory and Netscape's own "Smart Browsing" database, which does an excellent job of listing "official" web sites. Secondary results come from Google. At the Netscape Netcenter portal site, other search engines are also featured.
- Open Directory [New Window]
The Open Directory Project is the largest, most comprehensive human-edited directory of the Web. It is constructed and maintained by a vast, global community of volunteer editors. The Open Directory powers the core directory services for the Web's largest and most popular search engines and portals, including Netscape Search, AOL Search, Google, Lycos, HotBot, DirectHit, and hundreds of others.
The Open Directory Project (ODP) is also known as Directory Mozilla (DMOZ). Starting out as GnuWho, then NewWho, an alternative to Yahoo!, the ODP is edited by volunteers from all over the world. It was acquired by Netscape in 1998, but remains an open (free) index that any site can use. At the time of this update it contains 3.8 million sites, 52,260 editors and 460,000 categories (10/06/2002). Open Directory Data are used by a large number of sites, including Netscape, HotBot, Dogpile, AOL Search, Lycos, Pandia and Google.
"There is not, nor will there ever be, a cost to submit a site to the directory, and/or to use the directory's data. The Open Directory data is made available for free to anyone who agrees to comply with our free use license." -[Copyright 1998-2002 Netscape]-
Webmaster NOTE: Submitting your site DMOZ or ODP is as necessary as submitting to Google and Yahoo and maybe Alta Vista. Maybe in that order. :-). Google (easiest), then Alta Vista, then Yahoo and DMOZ a tie for hardest directories to submit a listing too (my opion [This Directory isn't with either... yet.] (;- ).
- RealNames [New Window]
- The RealNames system is meant to be an easier-to-use alternative to the current web site addressing system. Those with RealNames-enabled browsers can enter a word like "Nike" to reach the Nike web site. To date, RealNames has had its biggest success through search engine partnerships.
- University of Florida - Search & Directories [New Window]
- The UF Home Page underwent a major renovation during the summer of 1999 and was further refined in February 2000 after collecting feedback on the changes from users. The audience-based navigation of the site concentrates on giving new users an inroad into as much information as possible without overwhelming them with a large number of links at the top-level. To aid more experienced users, several "quick links" to highly trafficked sites, tools and online applications are repeated in prominent locations throughout. This design also stresses the beauty of UF's campus as well as current university news and events.
- Yahoo [New Window]
- Yahoo is the mother of all search sites, and by far the most popular. It is easy to use, and lists sites of high quality. If you are searching for a broad topic and you want a few good results, Yahoo! is the place to go. Yahoo now has its own search engine.
