This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Chuck Marean (talk | contribs) at 19:07, 6 June 2006 (may as well revert to 18:25, October 31, 2002 Branko). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.
Revision as of 19:07, 6 June 2006 by Chuck Marean (talk | contribs) (may as well revert to 18:25, October 31, 2002 Branko)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)A web directory is a web site that specializes in linking to other web sites and categorizing those links.
Web directories often allow site owners to submit their site for inclusion and let editors review a submission for fitness.
Later, the role of portal to the web has been taken over by search engines, web sites that index other sites based on key words.
Famous web directories are Yahoo! and Lycos.
Since recently, DMOZ has become an important player in the directory market, perhaps because of its open content aproach to editorial review.
Web directories belong to the oldest category of web sites. In the early days of the World Wide Web, it was still possible to maintain a large list linking to all or most web sites. It is said that the very first web site, made by web inventor Tim Berners-Lee, was a directory.
The Netherlands has seen the rise of a type of flat web directory, started by Durk Jan de Bruin's Startpagina, in which all categories are on the same level. Users can guess the existence of a category by prepending its name as a subdomain to the sites address. So, users interested in encyclopedias would try http://encyclopedia.directory.example as a domain name.