Click here for more information . Search Engines Search Engines vs. Directories Search engines, such as AltaVista, create their listings automatically. Search engines crawl through the web. Search engines eventually find your site and index the pages they find. Page titles, body text, META tags and other elements all play a role in what gets indexed.
People then search the index of what was found.
A directory such as Yahoo depends on human editors to create its listings. You submit a description of your site to the directory for editors to review. A good site, with good content, will be more likely to get reviewed than a poor site. A search of Yahoo looks for matches only in the editors descriptions. Some search engines use a hybrid of a crawler and an associated directory.