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Buying Flowers OnlineAugust 18, 2002 -- updated January 22, 2004Have you ever used Yahoo to find what you're looking for? Did you know that originally Yahoo was not a search engine? It seemed to work like a search engine, but it wasn't... it was a directory. Directories are similar to search engines, but there are some differences. One difference is that a search engine returns results based on the contents of the website. A directory returns results based on information submitted about the website. Now, Yahoo returns Google's search engine results for searches, but access to it directory results are still there. This is convenient for an illustration...Search on "Patio Furniture" in Yahoo and look at the result called "Outdoor Patio Furniture --- (Wood, Unfinished, Cedar, Wholesale ...". The reason it is listed so high is because a program (called a spider or a crawler) looked at that website's contents, counted how many other websites point to it, and decided that it was relevant enough to show up really high in the search results. Now, true relevance may be in the eye of the beholder, but according to Google (and hence Yahoo), this website is more relevant to your search than most.Now, click on the Directory tab in your window and look for the entry Outdoor-Patio-Furniture.biz. It's the same website as above (click on it if you're not sure), but you are now looking at a directory entry. Note that the "relevance" of the result is not due to the website's content, but is based on the text submitted to Yahoo along with some human judgment on the part of a Yahoo employee who approved the website's inclusion.So, which results results are better? the search engine or the directory? It depends. If you're looking for an article that discusses something specific, then use a search engine, because directories have no idea what's inside of an article. On the other hand, if you're looking for a product, either one will return websites that sell it. The difference is that a directory will primarily return websites that specialize in your product while search engines will return websites that sell your product, discuss your product, review your product, or even just mention it. Of course, it should be noted that Google and Yahoo both show search engine results by default, not directory results (you need to click on the directory link for directory results). I'm not sure what conclusions to draw from that fact... I'll leave that exercise to the reader.© 2004
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