Google offers many services in addition to its famous search engine. One of the best of these is the Google Directory which organizes web sites according to category. You can reach the Google Directory at http://www.google.com/dirhp. The Google Directory begins with 16 broad categories including arts, business, computers, games, health, home, kids and teens, news, recreation, reference, regional, science, shopping, society, sports, and the world. Each of these broad categories is broken down into dozens of subcategories which are further subdivided by related topics and so on.
The Google Directory is a great way to find relevant, high quality, reliable websites.
The Google Directory relies on voluteer editors who contribute links and monitor the quality of links in the Directory. Anyone can be an editor. The Google Directory is based on the DMOZ Open Directory Project. You can see the DMOZ directory at http://www.dmoz.org. The DMOZ Open Directory Project describes itself as “the largest, most comprehensive human-edited directory on the Web…The Open Directory was founded in the spirit of the Open Source movement, and is the only major directory that is 100% free. There is not, nor will there ever be, a cost to submit a site to the directory, and/or to use the directory’s data.”
The Open Directory Project serves Googles’s competitors as well, as Yahoo, Netscape, AOL, Lycos and many others use its data to provide similar directory services.
Posted by Paul Lewis, Government Documents Librarian, USC Aiken Library paull@usca.edu
