Community-Based Search Engines
By SearchEngineWatch.com Staff

Below is a list of search engines where volunteers or members of a community help create the listings, such as by contributing bookmarks, managing categories or submitting sites they like. 

Open Directory
http://dmoz.org/

The Open Directory uses volunteer editors to catalog the web. Formerly known as NewHoo, it was launched in June 1998. It was acquired by Netscape in November 1998, and the company pledged that anyone would be able to use information from the directory through an open license arrangement. Netscape itself was the first licensee. Netscape-owner AOL also uses Open Directory information, as does Google and Lycos. All of these services are described more on the Major Search Engines page.

Zeal
http://www.zeal.com/

Volunteer-driven directory where the community submits and rates web sites. Zeal is owned by LookSmart and provides listings for LookSmart's non- commercial categories. See the Major Search Engines page for more about LookSmart. 

Hotrate.com
http://www.hotrate.com

Volunteers either edit categories or simply participate as reviewers. The service is also supposed to provide rewards, including cash, to its contributors. Non- categorized results come from Google. 

HotLinks
http://www.hotlinks.com/

Uses bookmarks contributed by its members to allow users to search for sites of interest.

My Octopus
http://my.octopus.com

Allows anyone to create collections of information around different topics that are called "views." Views are extremely powerful. In addition to links to web pages, a view can contain parts of web pages, images, "informational elements" that pull data such as sports scores into a view, and more. It's also possible to search through the entire collection of contributed public view. 

Xoron
http://www.xoron.com/

Based on the Open Directory, Xoron allows its editors to build out category listings and pays them for revenue generated by their areas. Formerly called Wherewithal, the directory changed its name in mid-2001 so that the Wherewithal name could be used for the company's collaborative editing software.

http://searchenginewatch.com/links/community.html
         

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