The Opt-Index is unlike any other directory on the Internet. The Opt-Index Real-Time Business Directory gets all its information directly from the individual businesses and organizations themselves. It is not gathered from telephone books, pulled from the web by computers, or compiled by a team of editors. The Opt-Index is open to all legitimate businesses, and best of all, it's completely free! When you read a company's listing in The Opt-Index, you see it as it was entered by its owner. Each business enters as much or as little as it would like to have shown. Those that don't want to be listed at all, simply don't "opt-in".

Listing owners maintain complete control over their information. Pretend for a moment you have a listing in The Opt-Index. What do you do if your company gets a new phone number? Simply update it! Another email address? Add it! Moves to a new location? Change it! It's that simple. All the information that comprises each listing is always available for review and modification by its owner. As a result, the entries in The Opt-Index Real-Time Business Directory represent some of the most up-to-date information around. And, what if a business decides that The Opt-Index is not a good deal? It can delete its entire entry at any time — no questions asked.

We provide a powerful search tool. Our search options reach far beyond a single, simple keyword box. Before searching the entire directory for a single keyword and finding thousands of matches, you can first narrow the search by picking a category. Or, you can limit the search to a single country. Pick the best combination of business name, category, keyword, and location info, and you can home in on the desired results in no time. And to top it off, there is never any need to learn a strange search syntax or use Boolean logic.

Our search results are ordered objectively. For most searches, The Opt-Index returns all matching entries ordered alphabetically by business name. We do not sell the most prominent positions among the results to the highest bidder. We do not intermix advertisements among the search results. We do not list the same entry more than once. If a search involves keywords, then results can be sorted optionally by relevance. In this case, the relevance is based upon ratings that each individual listing owner gives to each keyword. It is not based upon an artificial interpretation such as the number of times certain words appear on a web page or the number of third-party hyperlinks that point to it.

Each listing entry paints a complete picture. A listing in The Opt-Index doesn't just focus on URLs, websites, and pages. It is not simply a telephone number and an address. Nor is it just a company email list. It is all of these and more. By allowing each business to list all forms of contact information as well as details such as category, keywords, and description, we make it easy for users to find the right entry and then make contact afterwards. By joining real-world geographical data with web addresses from the "ether", we make it possible to find websites for establishments doing business in a particular part of the world. By marrying categories with keywords, we make it possible to narrow keyword searches to a specific topic from the get-go.

Find only the most up-to-date information. Other directories which are based upon telephone company data are updated only once per year. A lot can happen in a year: new businesses open, old ones close, and some move. Entries in The Opt-Index Real-Time Business Directory can be updated by their owners at any time — instantly! To see when a listing was last updated or reviewed by its owner, just check the date stamp shown alongside each entry.

If you find a problem with a listing, you can Red Flag it! Every entry is accompanied by a small red flag for reporting problems. One click on the Red Flag, and a problem report form is displayed for the associated listing. Users can report problems with listing accuracy, broken links, incorrect categories, unrelated keywords, or even poor grammar.

Use The Opt-Index like the white pages. Just leave the category unselected and enter a business name. The Opt-Index will return a list of all businesses and organizations with that name. To see more options, select Starts with. The Opt-Index will search for names that start with the specified name. Select Exact match to limit your search to businesses whose names match exactly what you've entered. Then narrow your results by including a keyword or location.

Use The Opt-Index like an Internet directory. Leave the business name blank, leave the category unselected, and enter a keyword or phrase. The Opt-Index will return a list of all entries related to the specified term. Unlike a standard Internet directory or search engine however, the results returned may include businesses that do not have websites. To see only web-based organizations, select Web-based for the focus. To see only brick-and-mortar establishments, select Traditional. Then narrow your results by specifying a category or location.

Use The Opt-Index like all three directories at once. What do you suppose would happen if you specified a business name, a subcategory, and a keyword — all at the same time? You'd get some pretty focused search results, that's what. In fact, throw in a location, and you'd know right away whether what you're looking for is in the directory. The Search page at The Opt-Index is designed to accept all manner of combinations for search criteria. If it determines that your search criteria is overly broad (such as searching for everything in Canada, for example), it will tell you so.

Try searching for Aspen in your favorite search engine. You will probably find you get more matches than you could possibly use. Probably about 3,000,000 more. There's no doubt that the information you seek is in there. But how do you suppose you might pare that number down to a reasonable amount?

The Opt-Index to the rescue! By having a complete set of search fields in addition to the standard keyword box, The Opt-Index Real-Time Business Directory allows for very specific searches. Notice that, depending upon the actual goal of the search, the term Aspen may belong in the City field, the Keyword field, or the Business/Organization Name field.