Search Engine or Directory

The term search engine is often used as a catch-all phrase for all major search engines and directories. But what is the difference between a Search Engine and a Directory?

Search engines are programs

Let's start by looking at search engines. A search engine is a program that searches files (or documents) for given keywords and returns a listing of the files where the keywords were found. So a search engine is a program. When a search engine comes to visit it is in fact an automated process. There are no humans involved.

Two of the most popular search engines are Google (www.google.com) and Yahoo (www.yahoo.com).

Directories and editors

A directory on the other hand is all about the human touch. The directory uses human editors that review each site before it is listed. The editors are often volounteers and it is their job to

decide if you get listed or not

write your site description

decide the category to list you in.

Two popular directories are DMOZ (www.dmoz.org) and JoeAnt (www.joeant.com).

To sum it all up

So to make a long story short the main difference betwwen a directory and a search engine is that the directory is run by human editors whereas the search engine is a computer program that runs with no human intervention.