Subject Directory Exercise - Yahoo

Yahoo! is one of the most visited sites on the Web, popular for its search engine, entertainment areas, news, finance, and personal use tools. In the early days of the Web, Yahoo was most famous as a subject directory to websites. This "categorized guide to the Web" still exists and offers extensive coverage of most subjects. Unfortunately, it is no longer front and centre and takes some effort to find. In this exercise we will begin with some structured browsing, and then use the search box to search the entire directory.

Browse Yahoo

[Use your mouse to open sites in a new window. Windows users - right click and select Open in New Window]

1. Go to Yahoo Directory Search (search.yahoo.com/dir)
   

2. Click on the link for Regional (may have to scroll down).
   
   
   Note: Canadians see a slightly different page at http://ca.search.yahoo.com/dir and will not see the list of categories. If this happens, go to http://dir.yahoo.com/ or search.yahoo.com/dir.
   
   
3. Select Countries. Choose a country from the list. Notice that you may have to scroll down to see a complete list. (Use your page-down key or grab the scroll bar on the right with your mouse). Listings at a directory are often long and require scrolling down.
   
   
4. For the country you have chosen, choose Travel, and then pick the kind of travel in that country you'd like to do - air, automotive, backpacking, boating, cruises, train - the selection will vary with the country.

5. Go back to Countries, and choose another branch of the Subject Tree.

Search Yahoo Directory

[Use your mouse to open sites in a new window. PC users - right click and select Open in New Window]

Sometimes identifying the right subject branch to follow is not obvious. Use the Yahoo directory-search facility to look through the listings by keyword.

Go to Yahoo Directory Search. Make sure that Directory is in bold.

Try one of these:

• alexander graham bell
• children's books
• salsa music
• marlin fishing

Each of these examples has more than one word. It is not necessary to put the joining word, "and" between them. Just type the words into the Search box. Then click once on the Search button.

Yahoo will direct you to relevant categories and list sites in the directory that have your search terms:

1. It shows several categories for Bell, starting with • Telecommunications> History - click on More for a complete list.
2. There may be Sponsor Results on the right. These are paid listings, a form of advertisement, that match on one or more of your search terms.
3. Yahoo lists the web sites where the title or description matches on the search terms. For example, there is a site for Alexander Graham Bell Family Papers at the Library of Congressl that is listed as Telecommunications History > Alexander Graham Bell.

You may browse the categories to see all the sites that have been grouped into that topic, or go directly to a site by clicking on its link. The list of results will remain available - explore one site and use the back button to return and choose another link.

Where to next?

Now learn more about the Search Engine.