Posts Tagged ‘LookSmart’

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Over the past 8 weeks or so, we have seen many changes among the search engines. Search engines changing their ranking algorithms or the nature of their service is nothing new, however so much has happened in such a short amount of time that I though it would be beneficial to talk about much of what has happened recently and how all of it might affect you.

Last year we saw the demise of NBCi search and InfoSeek/Go, two high profile search services. This year we have already seen the demise of Excite and Direct Hit. Within the past month or so Google has added PPC listings, LookSmart converted over to PPC listings and Overture lost a major PPC listing account. And the following search engines have added new pay-for-inclusion services: AltaVista, All The Web (Fast/Lycos), and Ask Jeeves/Teoma.

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About Search Directories

Many of you are already familiar with Yahoo, the most popular search directory, but are not familiar with the other major directories and/or the difference between a directory and a search engine.

I’ll tackle the latter first. A directory works very much like a phone book. Web site owners submit their sites into a specific directory category. Web surfers click through the directory categories (i.e. Business, Education, News) to find a number of sub-categories that they will have to click through to narrow down their search. When they get to the sub-category that best pertains to their search, all the web sites that fit in that category are listed, usually in alphabetical order.

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