For example a search for the term washers will find pages that contains that term anywhere in the HTML code or the visible text of the page. In Web directories , you have to use the terms provided by human beings rather than by computer programs, and you have to follow their hierarchy to get what you want. So you might go to the category Education , then follow the link to Higher Education , then Colleges and Universities then United States to get to a list of private colleges by state. This is a longer process, but it has the advantage of allowing you to browse headings and pick those that will be really helpful. Generally, Web directories and search engines are becoming more like one another.
Many directories now incorporate the ability to search what they have selected.
In addition, nearly all the major search engines, including those listed here, now provide directory access to what they consider the best of the pages they index. It might be useful to think about search tools as a general category of things that help you find information on the Web, and to think about directories and search engines as providing different ways of getting at the stuff you need. There may be significant differences between the way results are ranked and displayed among the different search tools. Many use a ranking system, called relevance ranking, based on the relative occurrence of the terms you searched within the documents found. Sometimes the relevance is based on the terms in the visible text of the documents, but often relevance is figured based on the HTML coding of the pages.