SEO - Search Engines vs. Directories

As the internet has developed over the past decades, fetching information became a big struggle for day-to-day workers. With the web being so assorted, it can often be found difficult to obtain the exact or relevant information someone is searching for. This is primarily the reason why search engines were made. The  concise definition of a  "search engine" is a program that searches documents for specified keywords and returns a list of the documents where the keywords were found. According to a nationwide phone survey by Pew Internet & American Life Project shows, "84% of internet users have used search engines."

Examples of Major Search Engines: Google, Bing, and Ask

Although directories hold many of the same factors as search engines, they differentiate through the human factor behind it. A web directory is a web search tool compiled by human editors. While sites within search engines are scanned and resulted by a program crawler, sites are edited manually within directories.
 
Largest Directories: Yahoo and DMOZ

Both search engines and directories intertwine on the basis of supplier and receiver.  Since there are numerous search engines available on the internet, it is not possible for each and every one to constantly maintain and update their database. The supplier and receiver relationship is a crucial part of understanding the ranking system within websites.