Ordering Results

Google Directory orders the Web sites listed in each category in its patented PageRank order. The advantage of ordering the results already edited by a human being in such a fashion is that while the page may be relevant, all the other factors that affect whether you can expect a page to be relevant to your search are not included by the human editor. Knowing how many other sites link to a page, or whether the URL contains the keywords, and how many people regularly visit the site are all important factors in presenting results in a Google-like manner.

Comparing the Open Directory Project category listing to Google’s Directory, you find many similarities. The hierarchy of categories and subcategories is very similar. Even the entries in each category are similar, although not always exactly the same. The primary difference between the two directories is how the pages are ordered. The DMOZ results are ordered alphabetically. Google Directory results are ordered in PageRank order.

Changing the result order

If you prefer to see your results in alphabetical order, perhaps making it easier to find a page by name, Google lets you reorder the results in alphabetical order. Click the View in alphabetical order link in the green bar above the results labeled Web pages.

Switch between alphabetical and PageRank order by clicking the links in the bar above the results. The link, after it has been clicked and your results are reordered, changes to text that tells you that you are viewing the results in a particular order.

Note 

Changing the result order will not affect any searches you perform using the Google Directory search. The results of a search are always in PageRank order.

Visual page rank

When viewing Web page listings in the Google Directory in PageRank order Google displays a small green bar to the left of the entry. This green bar displays the importance of a site as measured by the PageRank software. As the darker green bar extends farther to the right the page is more important. This is useful when determining if pages, even though one is listed before another, may be of nearly equal importance based on the Google PageRank formula.

Note 

Google does not accept money to increase rankings within the Google Directory a0nd therefore does not show bias among pages. Google does not evaluate the importance of a Web page, but rather determines its importance based on how others use, link to, or organize the content.

The small green bars disappear when you order the page alphabetically. It’s not really certain why this provides a good measure of importance while still allowing the users to view the entries in alphabetical order.