Internet 101: Search Engines & Directories

I hope I do not repeat myself, too much. This is a note about the differences between search engines and directories.

Search engines use programs called spiders or bots to search for items on the Internet. There are literally hundreds of sites that call themselves search engines. Some work great, others don't. I stick to http://www.google.com/ for most of my queries and I can find other search engines by googling these words " search engines " . End of story for me about search engines. Google those terms and read all you ever want to know for YOUR searching...

In the simplest sense a Directory is a large collection of links / URLs put together by most anyone interested in a particular topic. They are organized by humans, not software. Google is a search engine and also has a fine directory http://directory.google.com/ . Another directory is http://dir.yahoo.com/ .

Directories can be a terrific place to begin most any search, esepcially when you are not yet sure what you are looking for. Many of the entries are quite well researched, others are old and out of date, others are short.

There are lots of directories to choose from. The above two will serve most general needs. There are more focused directories such as those done by libraries, http://www.ipl.org/div/blogs/ and http://www.internettutorials.net/choose.html .

There are also meta-sites done by Internet Researchers like the great folks at Pandia Post, http://www.pandia.com/ .

All of these sites are overflowing with tutorials, search engines and directories.

PS look for information on " the invisible web " . Just google the query then check out this article http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=2162871 .
Good luck with finding what you want.