A web site is a web site isn’t it?
When we use the Internet we don’t classify the sites we visit, we either find them useful or entertaining, or we don’t. To support a business online, however, it is helpful to think about how the different types of site relate, since to drive visitor traffic to your site, you will form partnerships with other third-party companies and they will fall into different categories of usefulness.
In 1996 a team of academics led by Sarker identified the following types:
· Directories (such as Yahoo, Excite).
· Search engines (Altavista, Infoseek).
· Malls (BarclaySquare, Buckingham Gate).
· Virtual resellers (Owns inventory and sells direct, e.g. Amazon, CDNow).
· Financial intermediaries (offering digital cash and cheque payment services such as Digicash).
· Forums, fan clubs and user groups (Referred to collectively as virtual communities).
· Evaluators (sites which act as reviewers or comparison of services)
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Search engines, spiders and robots
Automatic tools known as spiders or robots index registered sites. Users search this by typing keywords and are presented with a list of pages. For more about how search engines work, see www.howstuffworks.com/search-engine.htm.
Directories or catalogues
Structured listing of registered sites in different categories.
At that time there were many separate web sites offering these types of services. For example, Altavista (www.altavista.com) offered search engine facilities and Yahoo! (www.yahoo.com) offered a directory of different web sites. Since this time, such sites have diversified the services offered. Altavista now also offers a directory obtained from the Open Directory service (www.dmoz.org). Yahoo! now offers a search engine using the Google service (www.google.com). It is apparent that diversification has occurred through the introduction of new intermediaries that provide services to other intermediaries and also through acquisition and merger.
Portal
A web site that acts as a gateway to information and services available on the Internet by providing search engines, directories and other services such as personalised news or free e-mail.
The concept of the portal has evolved to reflect the range of services offered by some cybermediaries. The term ‘portal’ originated with reference to sites that were the default home pages of users. In other words, when users started their web browser, the first page they saw was their personal home page. When users use a newly installed browser it will be set up so that the home page is that of the company who produces it. In the case of Microsoft Internet Explorer this is usually www.msn.com (The Microsoft Network) or www.microsoft.com. This has helped MSN become one of the most popular portals.
Portals are significant since they are the prime real estate of the Internet. Portals are important to companies looking to use banner advertising or sponsorship to promote their products.
What about all the web sites that aren’t portals? These are usually referred to as destination sites. They are usually online business such as retailers or business-to-business supplier, but they could actually be other portals.