Web directories, by industry
A web directory is a site that lists other websites by category. Most will take almost anything: you submit your URL, pick a category, write a short description, and wait for the site to approve it. That is the general set, and it is where most people should start.
Some industries also have their own directories that only list one kind of business. A directory of solicitors will not list your plumbing company, and that selectivity is exactly why a listing there carries weight. Those industries get their own page, with their own entries, costs and advice, because very little of it carries over from the general set.
Pick the industry that describes your business. If none of them do, go to the general directories page.
Find your industry
General directories
Directories that take a website without asking what business you are in. It is the oldest category online, and the one where other lists most often recommend sites that have long since shut down.
24 entries20 free6 dofollow
Agencies and studios
For marketing, design and development firms. Your listing depends on reviews from your clients rather than on a form, so this is the one set here you cannot finish on your own.
27 entries22 free0 dofollow
Ecommerce
For online shops. Most of these are shopping feeds, classifieds and deal sites rather than classic directories, so the question is where buyers will actually see your products.
24 entries24 free14 dofollow
Healthcare, medical and dental
Practice finders, review sites and official provider registries, where patients look you up and where getting your details right matters more than anywhere else.
27 entries26 free9 dofollow
Home services and trades
Plumbing, heating, electrical and building work, on platforms where homeowners compare and hire tradespeople, many of which sell you leads as well as a listing.
27 entries22 free20 dofollow
Weddings and events
Venues, planners, photographers and the marketplaces couples actually browse. Very few of them overlap with the general directories.
Nonprofits and charities
Mostly registers rather than directories. You need charitable registration to get in, and listing is free.
Manufacturing and industrial suppliers
Trade indexes and supplier databases with their own classification codes, used by buyers sourcing suppliers rather than by consumers.
Restaurants and food
Menu sites, food guides and booking platforms, for places whose customers find them by searching for somewhere to eat.
Funeral homes
A small set with real trade registers behind it, and very few published lists that cover it at all.
Salons, beauty and wellbeing
Here the booking platforms are the directories, so your profile works as a booking page as much as a listing.
Accounting, insurance and financial advice
Professional bodies control who gets listed here, which keeps the directories small and the listings credible.
Legal
Lawyers, firms and chambers. Law has the largest directory layer of any industry here, and the hardest searches to compete in.
Real estate
Listings for agents and brokerages, which sit apart from the property portals that dominate the same searches.
Travel and hospitality
Tourism boards, regional guides and activity listings, several of which hold their listings to real editorial standards.
An industry gets its own page when two things are true. It has 15 entries that would not already appear on the general list, and it has something only that industry has, such as a register, a licence or an insurance requirement that a directory checks before it will list you.
When an industry has neither, you are better served by filtering the general page than by a thinner copy of it. That is why there are fewer pages here than industries. The cards without a link are industries we have not collected yet.