A web directory is a directory on the World Wide Web that specializes in linking to other web sites and categorizing those links. Web directories often allow site owners to submit their site for inclusion. editors review submissions for fitness.
Later, the role of portal to the web has been taken over by search engines, web sites that index other sites based on key words.
Famous web directories are Yahoo and the troubled LookSmart.
Since recently, Open Directory Project has become an important player in the directory market, perhaps because of its open content approach to editorial review.
Web directories belong to the oldest category of web sites. In the early days of the World Wide Web, it was still possible to maintain a large list linking to all or most web sites. It is said that the very first web site, made by web inventor Tim Berners-Lee, was a directory.
The Netherlands has seen the rise of a type of flat web directory, started by Durk Jan de Bruin's Startpagina, in which all categories are on the same level. Users can guess the existence of a category by prepending its name as a subdomain to the sites address. So, users interested in encyclopedias would try http://encyclopedia.directory.example as a domain name.
Other directories of interest include Zeal, and 1do3. 1do3 is a United Kingdom based web service which provides information within a specific and currently limited knowledge domain - which at present includes information about health care provision, employment, and a number of other UK related topics. Besides making use of human knowledge and filtering in order to improve the quality of the hits, 1do3 also uses an action oriented approach - "what do you want do do?", so focuses users on what they might be trying to achieve.
See also: List of web directories