Chapter 3: Directory Trolling and News Browsing

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In This Chapter

• Understanding Google Directory

• Browsing and searching the directory

• Visiting Open Directory Project

• Submitting a site to the directory

• Browsing and searching the astounding Google News

Google is primarily known as a search engine, but it offers two services that provide superb browsing:

• Google Directory: A fastidiously crafted catalogue of good Web sites, broken into hundreds of topical categories

• Google News: The world’s first international newsstand enhanced by Google technology

In a way, these two portions of Google are exactly opposed. Google Directory is completely hand-built, and Google News is completely automated. No site can be listed in the directory without human approval, whereas posted stories in Google News are untouched by human hands.

The directory represents the ultimate in human cooperation and virtual cataloguing. Google takes its basic listings from the Open Directory Project database, created by a large volunteer organization determined to assemble the largest and most useful classified index of Web sites. More than 20,000 real-life editors evaluate and select Web sites for this project, which was started in 1998. Listings created by the Open Directory Project are used by certain other Web directory sites, including Google Directory. To the raw Open Directory database, Google adds its PageRank formulas, creating an enhanced directory experience.

Google versus Yahoo!

The comparison is inevitable. The two best-known Web directories pitted against each other in a titanic struggle to the death . . . in my imagination, anyway. A competitive atmosphere does surround Internet portals generally and Web directories in particular. Yahoo! essentially invented the directory format that became standard, and Google is now the foremost search-and-browse site. Hence the battle imagery. And in this case, it’s a one-round knockout. Google is the new champion.

Don’t get me wrong. I wrote Yahoo! For Dummies and I am the world’s biggest fan of the Yahoo! experience. If Yahoo! disappeared, I’d turn off my computer and step outside for the first time in years. I pray it won’t come to that. But when it comes to trolling Web directories, Google’s brilliance casts Yahoo! into the shadows.

Google dominates for two reasons. First, Google’s directory listings come from the Open Directory Project, a large Web directory maintained and updated by thousands of volunteer editors. Yahoo!’s in-house staff, diligent though it be, cannot crank the numbers competitively. The results are lots of dead links in the Yahoo! Directory and a famously long lead time (seems like forever) to get a submitted site included in their directory.

The second reason for Google’s dominance is its PageRank system, which prioritizes the already stellar listings compiled by the Open Directory Project, enhancing its already stellar listings. And one more thing: Yahoo! Directory is nearly overwhelmed by ads and portal clutter, whereas the Google Directory page is clean as a cloudless day.

So, Yahoo! Directory, farewell. You gave me my first tours of the Web in 1994, during a thrilling time that is no more. Now, when the urge to troll comes over me, I head for Google Directory.

Google News employs computer algorithms to select and organize news stories from about 4,500 online news sources around the world. The news site is continually updated and organized by topic and news story, not by newspaper or news source.

This chapter covers both Google Directory and Google News. You might be less familiar with the directory than with the increasingly popular News section, but consider reading through both halves of the chapter. They contain tips that will turn your life around and save you from imminent perdition. Well, let me back down from that statement. The chapter contains tips for getting more out of Google. That seems safe.

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