What are the online business directories?One way local and global businesses can get found by online customers and searchers is through inclusion in online business directories. The online business directories offer lists of businesses within specific locations and particular business niches, or categories.Get Found - The online business directories for big and small businessesLet your business be found online. Regardless of whether you are running a small local company or you own a business, popular worldwide, people have to know about your presence. This is what the online directories are designed for. Nowadays the most popular search engines are different from what they were in the past. Google, Yahoo, and Bing are our preferred way to search for things, whether this is related to the weather forecast, the forex, the latest news or the best restaurants nearby. In fact, the most notable search engines have slowly taken over part of the "duties" from the online directories. However, regardless of this fact, the popular online directories are still serving well both sides - customers and business, because this is their main purpose.There are many different online directories and some are oriented to the local business while others serve to a huge audience worldwide. Some online business directories are oriented to a specific business sector, such as dentists, lawyers, movers, cars, jobs, etcetera while others serve a broader range of services and have a wider audience.No matter of their primary purpose, the clientele they serve to, or their size, all online directories have one thing in common-to provide quickly relevant and accurate information to their users. It sounds familiar, doesn't it? This is exactly what the search engines do.So what is the purpose of the online directories then?The tiny little difference between Search engines and Online directoriesPeople use online directories and search engines to find information online. The difference between the search engines and the online directories is in how they collect and organize the information from the Web.The most significant difference between an online directory and a search engine is that online directories are powered by people. This is how an online directory usually work. First, users (business representatives, individuals, site owners) submit the required information to directories. Then human editors determine the value of the information. If the submitted by users information is relevant and useful then the human editors may include it and publish it within the online directory. In the end, visitors use the online directory to search and find data or information.Unlike an online directory, a search engine uses bots (little programs, known also as spiders). The spiders search the Web, collects information and gets back this information to the search engine’s index. When people use Bing, Google or Yandex they are don't actually search the Web. They search the search engine's index of the Internet. Moreover, every search engines use complex algorithms to determine which Web pages are most likely to answer the queries people search for and serve these pages on the search engine results pages (known as SERPs.)Why is important your Business to be present in all important online directories?Having your company or private business registered in a popular online directory helps directly to improve a lot your brand's name search engine visibility. This is mainly because search engines count your business as an incoming link, and this is one of the variables in the search engine’s algorithm. Other factors are the keywords and the relevancy of the text and other media (images, videos, blogs, etcetera) used and published as information in the online directory.If you decide to join Websst and get your business listed on our website, then don't forget to check out our blog post "Why Websst is useful for your business?".