Directories and search engines afford good traffic and links. But which one of them is a better way to go for you? Search engines and directories can be important when you need traffic and links. But they are two different ways to accomplish your goals and they are different entities.

Directories are very numerous but Yahoo! is the most popular. Other very good directories include the Open Directory Project - dmoz.org. Search engines are less numerous and Google is by far the most popular with well over 80% of all searches. Here are some others - Yahoo!, AltaVista, and MSN. What are the differences in these two traffic building systems?

1) Search engines are used much more than directories by visitors. The reason is that search engines are easy to find and easy to use. You just search the words you want. With directories you have to locate them, peruse each subject area as well as the possibly many subdivisions of each subject area.

2) Search engines will give you free listings, but many directories will charge a fee for your submission. Search engines have no charges because they list your site however they wish based on their own judgment.

3) Search engines use robots while the directories use people to read your website. This is a major difference. The search engines are updated monthly by the robots (called crawlers and spiders). Robots are programs that locate a webpage and record data about your website to their database. Directories have a human reader visit your website to see if it will be included in the listings.

4) Directories place websites into categories based on your content. Search engines use an algorithm to organize and rank webpages for display. The question you might have is - which makes the best system for referral of traffic? It would be best of course if you get the most traffic you can from both search engines and directories. It takes time and work to make submissions to both directories and search engines. Here is my suggested approach: Submit your website to the big three search engines - Google, Yahoo! and MSN. Next, look for some highly ranked directories in your content areas. Focus on getting a few free directories to begin, hopefully ranked at 4-6. Jayde.com is one of the best and is easy to apply to. You can now add your website to a few more directories with free directory submissions.

Earth, a disposable product?
Arthur Browning