Most people are confident with using search engines these days, since they allow us to locate websites rather rapidly. This is crucial, however search engine results aren’t moderated by humans, instead it’s done by an algorithm. Why is that important? Well, imagine you are browsing for a pub in Milton Keynes as an example. You would enter these keywords into Bing (for example), then a number of results would appear. How do you know whether these results are trusted if they haven’t been been vetted by people? Here’s the answer: search engines employ human-edited online directories as a basic filter.

Directories still play a part on the internet, and the most discriminating directories are necessarily edited by people. A person may realise that (e.g.) : “that restaurant has a particular rating for cleanliness and having certain standards, that’s a really secure sign”. A good directory will receive a number of entries on a daily basis. An official will look into these entries, and if the editor is happy that the level of the submission is of a particular standard, it is included in to the online directory. And this is the reason why search engines still love website directories. Both dmoz.org and the Yahoo! directory are used by search engines as filters to determine the trustworthiness of a website - whether it’s included in dmoz.org / Yahoo! directory or not, as they’re human-edited and have stern guidelines.

So don’t minimize the significance of online directories because almost everyone uses search engines to discover things. A directory with hard to please guidelines can be a primary yardstick as to how reliable a website is. If you own a website, also look to get your site included in a niche directory, like a builders directory, a bed and breakfast directory, or a nutrition directory.

While mankind is requiring signs of trustiworthiness, the net will always need humans to present their stamp of approval, and thus directories will always play a part.