In the World Wide Web one calls collections of addresses of web pages, which are sorted according to certain topics, as listing or catalog.

Task and function

Web catalog editorships carry out what libraries for printed media take over for sources of on-line: They collect and sight information, develop taxonomies and list their collections. Among the collected sources rank thereby not only whole Websites or newsgroup, but additionally also individual documents and data base entries.

Beyond this pure library function Web listings their users offer to often also additional use, how

• short descriptions of the individual categories and their contents,
• Cross references to related topics,
• Cross references to same topic collections in other languages,
• a search function limitable on certain topics.

Web listings are not as extensive as the automatically provided listings of search machines. By their editorial control Web listings achieve however on the average a higher quality. The quality of a Web listing depends always strongly on its editorship.

Operators of commercial web pages strive for entries into Web listings to increase in order to lead visitors to their offers and - which for the search machine optimization of importance actual the number with them are received left. Commercial Web listings offer an entry against payment, which is usually temporally limited. Listings, with which commercial interests are the center of attention, prove however for user, who looks for information, usually as a little helpful.

Kinds of Web catalogs

These most today well-known Web catalogs are maintained manually, i.e.: All entries are sighted, examined and listed by humans. In this kind a quality of the collection is guaranteed, which would not be to be reached with an automated process. Problematic with this method however the high expenditure and thus the large need at coworkers are, in order to be able to ensure a comprehensive and current listing. Often manually provided listings are limited therefore to small, closely defined topic areas. Acquaintance exceptions educate Yahoo! - Catalog or the open directory Project.

Another beginning for the organization of link collections consists in the formation of Ad-hoc-categories of search words. These automatically generated catalogs contain substantially more extensive and more current contents. In their quality they do not reach however today yet the level, which exists during the manual assortment. A well-known example of Ad-hoc-listing is the WiseGuide of the search service WiseNut.

Further can be divided into hierarchical and not-hierarchical Web listings. In hierarchical listings categories by entries and the entries of the listings themselves are often sorted in a clear order. An entry is thereby often only in a certain category, what makes it with difficulty discoverable. An example of a very hierarchical Web listing is the open directory Project (examples see list of Webverzeichnissen#Hierarchi Web listings).

Nichthierarchi listings consist against it of a network-well-behaved structure, with whose knot the entries (left) are linked. Thus the entries and categories are easier to find, an associative search are rather possible (examples see list of Webverzeichnissen#Themennetzwerke).

Finally can be differentiated between commercial and mainly not-commercial Web listings. By the business model of many Web listing operators the danger of a reduced objectivity particularly exists with first: The increase of the rank height in a listing for the own web page becomes the officially offered service (examples see list of Web listings). The user cannot differentiate, which web pages from itself a high rank and which a manipulated to have.

Problems and solutions

With large volume of data on the one hand the danger exists for Web listings that web pages any longer not existing are referenziert. On the other hand the relocating barness of relevant web pages suffers with large volume of data.

In order to prevent these lack, modern Web listings are equipped with different manual and automatic mechanisms, as for example

• manual systems of evaluation ("“Voting"”)
• automatic systems of evaluation ("“Ranking"”)
• Robots ("“Webbots"”) for examining and if necessary remove dead left
• Evaluation of the clicking behavior of the users

See also: Search machine, Metasuchmaschine, Web portal, Business Suchmaschine

Overview of some example listings and the influence on PAGE-climb

Milos Mandic: '' Under! => comparisons from Switzerland and the FRG ''

Literature

Dock Hamdorf: '' Who lists the ''; In: NfD 52; 2001; 263-270

see also: List of Web listings

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