Besides search engines, web directories are commonly used tools to find the websites that contain the information or products and services you need or desire. Web directories sort websites based on category rather than keyword, making it easier to choose the site you need. While they contain hundreds of thousands of stored website links, web directories offer an efficient way to weed through the web and maintain your sanity.

There are so many duplicate sites on the web today and they are very difficult to tell apart. This is thanks to cloning, where a coder will go in and create a copy of a site for someone else for a large amount of money. This has made surfing the web even harder in recent years as some of these sites change the information to directly deceive users into believing that they are the first of their kind in operation. This has made it difficult to find truthful and accurate information on the web in so many arenas. Web directories look to change all that and hope to clean up the web by offering their services, most often supported only by advertising, available to the world.

The first way in which a web directory is different from your average search engine is the lack of keyword usage. This occurs because the web directory requires all sites who wish to be placed in the directory to choose a main category for their site. This helps level the playing field in terms of non-targeted searches. Instead of getting a bunch of sites that are of no help because the webmaster has embedded false keywords in the site, you get only the best-targeted results based on the category you choose. This level of efficiency may never be attained by search engines because of their reliance on keywords. Barring any major changes in technology, search engines will continue to pull non-targeted sites because of false keyword embedding.

Secondly, web directories allow for webmasters to choose a second category to more accurately describe the content of their site. This works to further weed out dishonesty among websites and their owners. It would be of no advantage for them to list their site in the directory under the wrong category as people would simply skip over the link and move on to the next. Under the second category, the web directory lists the site twice in the directory and that is the only duplication that will be found in a web directory.

Web directories also carefully choose which sites to include by crawling each site before agreeing to list it. This will keep clones from being established among the already listed sites. This creates a level of confidence in web directories as they are committed to only bring the best possible sites to their searchers and nothing less. While search engines are great tools, they cannot compete with web directories when it comes to accuracy.

There are many web directories to be found. Check with your ISP for personal recommendations on the best web directories there are to fit your needs.