Human directories: structured but small. In order to apply the intelligence needed to understand the contents of web pages, human editors can be employed to read, summarize, and classify web pages. The data in a human-generated directory is of a much higher quality because editors can structure it according to specific fields (company name, address, category, topic, etc.). When the data in a database is structured, the search tools can be improved, and the user stands a much better chance of narrowing the search results effectively. However, the cost and time of using an editor is much greater than that required by an automated system. Consequently, directories typically contain far fewer entries than a search engine, often less than a million.

Add smarts to search engines. Search engines suffer from unstructured data. To improve them, the way that they gather and classify data must be enhanced to apply structure automatically. Work is progressing in this area on at least two fronts. Efforts to manually tag data semantically would have human editors flag web page content ahead of time according to its meaning. This approach essentially converts content into a separate language that search engines can understand. To succeed, a standard must be developed, and all web content must be manually augmented. The other approach is to increase the intelligence of the search engine itself. As it encounters a page, it would accurately determine whether it is reading the company name, address, or product catalog. For this approach to succeed, major advances in Artificial Intelligence are required.

Add editors to directories. Directories are limited by labor costs. To improve them, more editors must be employed for less. One solution is to use a team of volunteers. This approach drives the labor costs to zero and allows the directory to employ more editors, but the number of editors is still far too small to thoroughly index something as large as the World Wide Web, much less all traditional businesses as well.

The Opt-Index solution. Significant improvements to the data classification problems suffered by search engines are not going to happen any time soon. It will be awhile before computers are regularly 'reading' the web. On the other hand, The Opt-Index believes it has found a solution to the affordability problem of the human-generated directory approach: increase the number of editors to include all qualified people on the planet. Thus, all business owners are essentially considered editors of their own information. No one is more knowledgeable on the topic, and each is compensated by the opportunity to be listed in the business directory. In exchange for a company's contact data, the company receives what amounts to free advertising. The general populace benefits by having a well-organized, limitless directory of hand-compiled information.

Because only the minimum information is gathered when a new listing is added, you are encouraged to add additional information such as telephone numbers, email addresses, and keywords using our Update Listing feature.

New entries are added daily to our ever-growing business directory. When The Opt-Index was initially launched on the World Wide Web, it was empty. (Well, technically it was not completely empty. We at The Opt-Index did list ourselves as the first entry. But other than that, it was indeed empty.) Because the directory is based solely on the voluntary participation of individual businesses and organizations, there is no way to force anyone to 'opt-in'. Since then however, the directory has grown rapidly as businesses have added new listings — one by one.

The Opt-Index is the web in real-time. Because new listings are added directly to the directory, business owners see instant results. Incorrect or out-of-date information can be modified immediately. Other, competing web directories based upon telephone company data are typically updated only once a year. Users of The Opt-Index benefit by seeing some of the most current information available on the Internet. The freshness of each listing is clearly shown alongside each listing in the form of a date stamp (for example, "Effective: 08/2003").

Businesses need not worry about how a search engine will invent its listing. Within The Opt-Index, each business maintains total control over its listing. Gone is the concern that a search engine will draw incorrect conclusions based upon the position and frequency of words on the page. Gone is the need to employ third-party software to analyze your website for keywords and problems. No need to worry that information hidden in databases or page frames will not be exposed to the search engine crawler, thus skewing its interpretation of the site. And, say good-bye to concerns that your site will receive a poorly placed listing among the hundreds or thousands of results returned.

When you submit a search to The Opt-Index, your browser sends your request over the Internet to our servers in our data center. Our servers first check each request for validity and completeness. Each value is checked individually, and then all values taken together are checked to see if they make sense. For example, the format of the ZIP/Postal Code depends upon the Country given. Invalid search requests result in an immediate error response back to your browser.

Valid searches continue to the next stage where they are transformed into dynamic queries and submitted to our object-oriented database. The database contains a mixture of web-based and traditional businesses — all of whom have provided their own listing information. Using your search criteria, the database is checked for matching listing entries. If no matches are found, then the Search Page is returned to your browser with an appropriate warning.

If one or more matching entries are found, they are formatted into a table of search results. Normally, the entries are ordered alphabetically by Business/Organization Name. If your search includes a keyword, however, then you may elect to have the results sorted by relevance. The Search Results page is dynamically generated and returned to your browser for your review.

Unbiased search results you can trust. All entries within The Opt-Index Real-Time Business Directory are on equal footing. We do not auction result placement as advertising. Newer or enhanced entries are not given preference over other entries. We make no judgment regarding an entry's merit or popularity based upon our own impressions. The number of links pointing to a website does not impact its position in the results. Instead, we present our search results in a straightforward fashion and leave it to you to form your own opinions.

Bookmarked entries function like a dynamic address book. Each entry in The Opt-Index Real-Time Business Directory gets its own Listing Detail page. When you select a business or organization from among the search results, the very latest information available for that entry is displayed in your browser. By bookmarking this page, you can keep a record of this information for yourself. Any time you return to an entry's Listing Detail in the future by accessing your bookmark, you will receive the latest data. In other words, if a company should change its telephone number between the time you bookmarked their listing and the time you return later, you will see the new phone number. It is almost as if the company updated your personal address book for you!