Forum Moderators: open
Are there directories that really stand out in your experience? What makes them stand-outs?
Besides a link and a brief description I often would like to see additional information, such as markets served (regional, national, international), etc.
What do you think a directory needs to offer to make it competitive with (as useful or more useful that) a search engine?
Dmoz is a great directory but it has problems with granularity. Some categories have no editors and when you get down to a local/county level, you need someone who would know the correct category.
The categorisation plays a very important part. If people are looking in a specific category for sites, then they should be presented with relevant sites. Such as thing sounds self-evident but with organically grown categories structures, it is all too easy to wrongly categorise a site.
The final thing would be that the data in the directory be kept current and squatted domains be eliminated quickly.
Don't discount the search engine though. Many users like to navigate by search engine rather than digging through a directory. A search engine does their thinking for them.
Regards...jmcc
What info is most useful in any directory?Being 'useful' is a highly personal thing. What I find useful may well be worthless to someone else!
The way I see it, the usefulness of the directory is related to the number of different ways one can search for information in it. Or, in other words, how close you can get to clearly define what you are after and then obtaining the results that match it.
For a niche directory this is usually quite easy. Suppose that the directory only list sites that deal with horse racing in the UK. If that's what interestes you - it would be an excellent search tool.
Life is much harder for a general purpose directory. Webwork is very right in saying that having a description and a title doesn't get you much. If that's all you have, you are confined to do just keyword searches. Well, such searches produce very good results at a good search engine or a meta search engine - so what's the advantage?
The only way a general purpose directory can make a REAL difference is by providing means of narrowing down the search results in a way no search engine CAN do. For example:
Assume that you live in Paris and you want to by a rare classical music CD. You find several such sites, but which of them will actually SHIP to Paris? A Directory can provide answers to such a question.
You feel like doing some betting - but not risk any money. Surprisingly - there are online casinos that allow you to play for free. A directory can make that disnction - a search engine cannot.
Bottom line - there are no short cuts. To provide an outstanding service to the searcher the Directory (and the editors) must put in a lot of effort. Quite understandably, very few are willing to do that.
MC
I find most directories marginally useful. They contain a link and a very brief, generalized description.
Sounds like the good old SERP to me. However, there are some directories which try to add to the user experience. Stuff such as a hover message, a news flash, an expire date etc...
Webwork:
What do you think a directory needs to offer to make it competitive with (as useful or more useful that) a search engine?
Brilliant question. Here are my votes (from a submitters point of view):
- I would like to define the title myself
- I would like to define the description myself
- I would like to submit instantly
- I would like to update my listing at any time
- I would like to have any changes in my web site picked up in the directory automatically
AND
- I would like the directory to be tidy and free from spammers
jmccormac:
Reviews written by people who actually have know about what they are writing about and can categorise a website properly.
I think you are referring to blogs here...
mrdch:
Bottom line - there are no short cuts. To provide an outstanding service to the searcher the Directory (and the editors) must put in a lot of effort. Quite understandably, very few are willing to do that.
On the contrary, many are willing to contribute. You simple have to EMPOWER them. Yes, trust in man and man will do wonders. Have faith in your fellow citizen and the result will astound you.
Regards...jmcc
- I would like to define the title myself
- I would like to define the description myself
AND
- I would like the directory to be tidy and free from spammers
Yeah, that would be the day :) Call me cynic - I must be too old to believe in utopia of that kind...
MC
Yeah, that would be the day :) Call me cynic - I must be too old to believe in utopia of that kind...
I'm not convinced that it has to be utopia. There are directories which successfully organize submitted web pages in this way, i.e. where the title and the description are defined by the user, and that still maintain a decent standard in the directory. Administration of such a directory is quite easy since it is mostly about supervision of new and updated listings. In my experience, an administrative action is only required let's say in 1 out of every 300 listings. This means that the other 299 were successfully "self organized". I think this proves that self organized web directories where the users organize and describe the web themselves are indeed viable, and are not utopia.
<added>Great, now I can edit my posts!</added>
Administration of such a directory is quite easy since it is mostly about supervision of new and updated listings.
Well, that's a different ball game now. So in that directory administrators supervise the listing. If that includes the ability and authority to delete, modify, reject or add as they see fit, this is hardly a 'self regulated' body. And I thought you want to trust people :)
Yes, trust in man and man will do wonders. Have faith in your fellow citizen and the result will astound you.
MC
basically dmoz is not just a directory of links, it does have a search facility as well, which is makes it a hybrid in my eyes and makes it just as relevant as google.
secondly the reason so many search results are inaccurate and the prevalence of keyword stuffing is that everyone wants to be at the top of the search results.
Maybe their needs to be a different system for this, maybe that one site can have only 1 set of keywords, but it is a major problem, anything to do with money, example casino sites will produce a ridiculous number of sites. Who says site number 1 is better than number 20.
I'd say, 1 out of every 75-100 sites have a good description that accurately describes the page and isn't
a) Two words, usually a repeat of the title or
b) Keyword stuffing.
I just reviewed a couple of categories in the directory I was referring to and could not find any matches for a). Regarding b), ok some descriptions did contain several keywords but most of the time they also quite aptly described the content of the web sites in question. In other words, no real problems with the descriptions in a self organized directory, and definitely not a 99 out of 100 flawed description rate.
I'd say, 1 out of every 75-100 sites have a good description that accurately describes the page and isn't
a) Two words, usually a repeat of the title or
b) Keyword stuffing.
Editor_qbp meant 1 out of every 75-100 sites submitted to the directory, not 1 out of every 75-100 sites that are actually listed in the directory. Editors correct the titles and descriptions before publishing the listing.
In a self organized web directory there is no difference between a submitted site and a listed site. That's why the directory is self organized. There are no editors needed to correct any titles or descriptions.
In this regard, a self organized web directory is more like a search engine where all the data for a listing is taken directly from the html source of the web page itself.
Self organization does not necessarily imply self regulation however. Directory administrators can delete or block web pages when a submission is blatantly out of hand. Such admininistrative actions are however very rare and occur on the average only once in every 300 submissions. In my opinion, this shows that there is a great potential for a directory paradigm where the users organize and describe the web themselves.
Even the links lists in some forums I moderate end up being a free for all that I end up having to fix or they'd be no use to anyone. Letting them go loose on a larger scale is a scary proposition.
