When you’re looking for help with an unfamiliar topic you probably use a major search engine to find Websites that provide information about that topic. But did you know that a typical search engine won’t show you the vast majority of relevant Web sites? That is because it is too expensive to index the entire Web, so search engines take short cuts and the quality of their listings is usually very poor. Fortunately, there is an alternative to search engines.

Web directories have been around for many years but they have fallen out of favor with searchers because companies like Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft have made the search engine industry seem very glamorous. In fact, search engines often produce results that include Web spam, malware, and irrelevant content. If you’re tired of digging through page after page of search engine-generated listings, maybe you should consider using a traditional Web directory like Galaxy. Many smaller directories specialize in just one area.

For example, you may want to find Websites to help you with your pottery hobby. Ceramic-based Web content is not all that rare but trying learning about it through search engines. They ignore 90% or more of all pottery and ceramic-related Websites. Fortunately, there are Ceramics Dircetories out there whose editors have vetted many sites, sometimes thousands, that may be relevant to the topic of pottery.

And not all directories are made by professional editors. Many people create their own custom directories using free services like Yahoo! and Rollyo. These kinds of services make directory compilation a relatively easy and painless task. You can devote only a few minutes per day to a custom directory and still have a pretty decent collection of Websites at the end of a year.