Link directories take a different
shape in each country

In many countries people reach sites through a page of links rather than a search box: a 网址导航 in China, the annuaire of your own département in France. Each of the eleven kinds below is backed by sites that were opened and checked, and the counts come from those checks.

checked 2026-08-22

网址导航wǎngzhǐ dǎohángChinese-speaking webA start page that tiles the doors to weather, news, video and shopping on one screen; often the browser's home page.extant 11 · former 2 каталог сайтовkatalog saitovRussian- and Ukrainian-speaking webA catalogue that lists sites one by one, each with a written description, sorted by category.extant 10 · former 5 katalog stronPolandModerated catalogues that list only reviewed sites; they survived alongside Poland's SEO culture.extant 6 · former 3 WebkatalogWebverzeichnisGerman-speaking webDirectories sorted by trade and region, where site owners register their own listing.extant 18 · former 3 annuaireFrench-speaking webDirectories that gather the sites of one département or region.extant 12 · former 3 startpaginaDutch-speaking webOne link page per subject, a form that spread across the Dutch web.extant 14 · former 2 lap.huStartlapHungaryThemed link pages that grew into a national start page.extant 4 · former 1 katalogasLithuania and the BalticsSeveral catalogues in use side by side in a small country.extant 6 · former 1 สารบัญเว็บsarabun webThailandA table of contents of the web, still kept inside a major portal.extant 2 · former 0 دليلdalīlArabic-speaking webGuides to Arabic-language sites that English indexes barely show.extant 12 · former 0 電話帳系Hitta · Gule Sider · Krak · Já · local.ch · Gelbe Seiten · Páginas AmarillasNordics, Switzerland, German-speaking and Latin AmericaSearch that grew out of the paper phone book: people, companies and maps in one window.extant 24 · former 4 Gone kindsTier XJapanese directory search, the big centralised directories, a national portal erased by politicsTier X · 157

Gone kinds

Tier X · 157

Japanese directory search

Every surviving domain of Japan's old directory-search sites had become something else when opened: a branding agency, a hot-spring inn, an overseas SaaS. Kept as the example of why a matching name proves nothing.

The big centralised directories

DMOZ (closed 14 March 2017), the Yahoo! Directory (closed at the end of 2014), Яндекс.Каталог (no catalogue at the URL). The big, commercial, centralised directories went as a layer; the non-profit, distributed, per-language ones remain. Curlie →

How a national portal disappears

TUT.BY of Belarus has no DNS record at all. A search results page never shows this kind of disappearance.

Hijacked and gone (JA) →