Human-edited Website Directories Are Still Vital
Everybody is comfortable with browsing the net with search engines in 2009, as they allow us to discover things rather quickly. This is wonderful, but search engine results aren’t calculated by people, instead it’s done by an algorithm. Why is that noteworthy? Imagine you’re searching for a hotel in Glasgow as an example. One would enter this keyphrase into Google (for example), then a list of search results would be shown. How do you know whether these results are reliable if they’ve never been vetted by people? Here’s the solution: search engines use human-edited online directories as a basic filter.
Directories still play a part on the web, and the best directories are inevitably edited by humans. A human may discover that (for instance) : “hmm, that restaurant has a particular rating for cleanliness and having certain standards, that’s a rather encouraging sign”. A well-known directory will receive many entries everyday. An editor will investigate these submissions, and if the official is content that the quality of the submission is good enough, it is added to the website directory. This is the reason why Google still loves online directories. Both the Yahoo! directory and dmoz.org are used by search engines as filters to discover the veracity of a website - whether it’s included in dmoz.org / Yahoo! directory or not, as they’re human-edited and have stringent rules-for-entry.
Therefore don’t minimise the implication of online directories just because almost everyone uses search engines to discover things. A human-edited directory can be a primary measuring device as to how reliable a website is. If you are a website owner, try and get your site added in a niche directory, like a gardening directory, a motel directory, or a restaurant directory.
While humanity is requiring to act upon signals of trust, the internet will forever rely on people to issue their seal of approval, and thus directories will always play a role.
