Web site directories have always been hailed as a great resource for end users to find quality web sites. Whereas search engines use technology by sending out spiders to crawl and gather web pages, directories use human editors to do the same job. Until recently the technology used by search engines was often flawed, producing results that for the users were unreliable and frequently not relevant to their queries.

This gave rise to the popular claim that directories would provide better and more relevant results due to the fact that human eyes check and judge every web site submitted to them and with that lead searchers to sites with quality content. This claim was to be further enhanced by the numerous categories and sub categories that almost all directories are divided into, negating the need for a complicated relevancy algorithm as searchers are able to follow a clear path to the subject of their query.

Another important and to a high degree valid claim would be that directories are better at rooting out spam as due to their human intervention this had more of a chance of being detected unlike the algorithms used by search engines that were more easily analysed and therefore more easily manipulated by spammers.

How times have changed! Today search engine technology has progressed to such sophistication that the results are not only far more reliable, relevant and spam free than before but also far more easily obtained, not least for all the tools provided to help searchers reach their various destinations quickly and precisely. This has left the web directory as the poor relation among search tools with most of them declining into obscurity. Even the largest directory globally, namely the Open Directory Project barely makes a dent in the global search traffic today.

Why then are there still so many directories on the web with new ones springing up almost daily one might ask. The answer is simple and requires merely one phrase: Link popularity. A link from a directory is still a link and if it is regarded to be a quality directory it therefore is a quality link that can weigh more heavily in determining relevance with a major search engine. (more about link popularity...)

The links featured below will take you to the web site directories currently used by sytemaker.com to help enhance the link popularity of our clients:

The hard fact of being a directory can be expressed in a simple proverb: Here today, gone tomorrow. So unless a directory is specialising in a narrow subject it will always struggle to survive due to the sheer numbers of existing directories on the web as well as new ones appearing. This means that the above list is very likely to change frequently.