The Open Directory Project

As good as Yahoo! is, their efforts in indexing all the available webpages has been limited by the number of people working for Yahoo!. As the number of available webpages has grown exponentially in the past several years, it has become harder and harder to keep up.

In answer to this dilemma, the Open Directory Project has taken a new approach. This project has recruited volunteer editors to work together to build a non-commercial web index that now rivals Yahoo! in usefulness. As I update this page in early April, 2010, the Open Directory Project has over 85,000 editors who have indexed over 4.5 million sites into nearly 600,000 categories.

Click here to open the Open Directory in a new browser window.

The first thing you will notice is the lack of advertising that plagues the commercial web indexes. Resist the urge to enter a topic in the search box and click on the Reference category heading. When the Reference page appears, click on Education. Spend some time exploring topics of interest to you. Remember to add new sites to your Bookmarks/Favorites.

Having done that, move to the top of any page in the directory and enter a keyword or phrase into the search box. Notice that you have the option of searching the entire directory or just the category.

Now, move to the bottom of the page and notice that you can pass your search topic along to a number of external search engines. This can be a very useful feature.

Next: Other Web Indexes