Six words get used as though they were synonyms. They are not. Each one describes a different arrangement between three parties: you, the business you are trying to reach, and whoever is being paid somewhere in the middle. Once you can tell them apart, a page that looked confusing usually resolves into something quite legible.
None of these categories is dishonest by definition. A marketplace is not worse than a directory. A listicle is not a scam. What matters is knowing which one you are on, because each answers your question in a different way and each has a different reason to want your click.
What this is, and who it is for
This is a working glossary for anyone who lands on a page full of businesses and cannot tell what the page is for. It defines each term by two things only: who pays whom, and what you can actually do on the page. Not by what the design looks like, because the designs converged years ago and now they all look the same.
If you want the underlying economics rather than the vocabulary, the five business models these map onto covers the money side in detail. This post is the vocabulary. A shorter version of each definition also lives in the glossary.
Directory
Who pays whom: in the classic form, nobody pays anybody. The directory's operator bears the cost of compiling and maintaining the list. In the common commercial form, the listed business pays the directory for inclusion, for position, or for an enhanced entry.
What you can do there: read a description of a business and follow a link to it. That is the whole function. A directory does not transact, does not take your enquiry, and does not stand between you and the business afterwards.
A directory is a pointer. Its output is a set of destinations, and its quality is a question of what got in, what got left out, and whether anyone has looked since. The word carries no information about whether money changed hands, which is exactly why it is worth asking.
The single most useful question to ask of a directory is not "is this paid?" but "when was this last checked?" A free directory that nobody maintains and a paid directory that nobody maintains produce the same experience for you: a list of destinations, some meaningful share of which no longer exist.
Aggregator
Who pays whom: usually nothing flows between the aggregator and the businesses it lists, because the businesses generally did not agree to be listed. The aggregator collects records from elsewhere, often at scale, and earns from advertising, from data licensing, or from selling upgrades back to the businesses whose records it already holds.
What you can do there: search a very large collection and follow a link out. The breadth is the product.
The defining feature of an aggregator is that its records were compiled rather than submitted. Nobody chose to be there. This produces two predictable consequences: coverage is wide, and accuracy is whatever the source data was on the day it was collected. It also produces the situation where a business owner discovers a page about their business that they did not create, cannot easily edit, and did not consent to. That situation is common enough to have its own procedure — how to get removed from a directory that scraped you walks through it.
An aggregator will often offer the business a way to "claim" the record. That claim flow is frequently where the business model actually lives.
Marketplace
Who pays whom: the marketplace takes a cut of the transaction, a listing fee, a subscription, or some combination. The money is tied to the sale, which means the marketplace's interest is in the sale happening on its own surface.
What you can do there: complete a transaction without leaving. Browse, compare, pay, and often handle delivery, messaging and disputes inside the same system.
A marketplace is not a pointer, it is a venue. The business you are buying from is a tenant. This has real consequences for you: your relationship, your payment record and your correspondence usually sit with the marketplace rather than with the business. It also has consequences for the business, which does not own the customer relationship and often cannot contact you outside the platform.
The tell is simple. If the checkout, the messaging and the dispute process all happen without you ever arriving at the business's own site, you are in a marketplace, whatever the page calls itself.
Lead-gen site
Who pays whom: the business pays for your enquiry. Sometimes per enquiry, sometimes per matched job, sometimes as a subscription that entitles them to a share of enquiries in a category or an area. You never pay, and that is the design.
What you can do there: fill in a form. Not browse, not compare in any meaningful sense, not visit a business's own site. The form is the product and everything above it exists to get you into it.
This is the category most often mistaken for a directory, because it is frequently dressed as one. The structural difference is what happens after you type. On a directory, you leave. On a lead-gen site, your details become the thing being sold, sometimes to several businesses at once, which is why you occasionally get four calls after making one enquiry. Sites that sell your enquiry follows a single enquiry through the handoff step by step.
There is nothing inherently wrong with paying for introductions. The problem is when the page is presented as an editorial selection and is actually an auction for your contact details.
Listicle
Who pays whom: varies enormously. Some listicles are unpaid editorial. Some carry affiliate links, so the publisher earns when you click through and buy. Some sell placement outright. Many mix all three within a single page.
What you can do there: read an ordered set of recommendations and click out to the items. The order implies a judgement, and the judgement is the thing that requires scrutiny.
A listicle differs from a directory in one important respect: it is ranked, and a ranking is a claim. The claim may be based on testing, on editorial opinion, on availability of an affiliate programme, or on nothing at all. How a top ten list gets assembled takes the format apart mechanically.
The useful question is: what would have had to happen for this order to be different? If you cannot imagine a process that would have produced a different item at number one, there probably was not one.
Doorway page
Who pays whom: nothing flows to the businesses, because doorway pages generally are not about the businesses. The operator earns from advertising on the page, from onward traffic sold elsewhere, or from the enquiry the page captures.
What you can do there: very little. That is the definitional feature. A doorway page exists to be arrived at, not to be used. Once you arrive, it either funnels you somewhere else or offers thin content that could have been generated for any place, category or combination of the two.
The structural signature is templating. Take one page, swap a word, publish it again. Change the town, the trade, the year, the adjective. The result is a large number of pages that each look purpose-built and are collectively hollow. Content is generic because it was never written about anything specific.
We publish none of these. This is a firm rule rather than a preference: no page on this site is generated by combining a category with a place, and no page is produced by substituting a variable into a template. It is worth stating plainly because the pattern is easy to fall into and very hard to unwind. Our full list of things we will not publish is at what we refuse to publish.
One clarification, because it matters. Search engines have published guidance about doorway pages, and that guidance is theirs, not ours, and it is not law. We are describing an observable page pattern, not restating anyone's policy.
A quick comparison table
| Term | Who pays whom | What you can do there | What the site earns from | Where you end up |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Directory | Sometimes nobody; often the business pays for inclusion or position | Read a description, follow a link out | Inclusion fees, position fees, or nothing | On the business's own site |
| Aggregator | Usually nothing flows; businesses did not opt in | Search a large compiled set, follow a link out | Advertising, data licensing, upgrades sold back to businesses | On the business's own site, or on a claim page |
| Marketplace | The business pays a commission, fee or subscription | Browse, compare, message and pay without leaving | A cut of the transaction | Still on the marketplace |
| Lead-gen site | The business pays per enquiry, per job or by subscription | Fill in a form | The sale of your enquiry | Waiting for a call |
| Listicle | Mixed: editorial, affiliate commission, or paid placement | Read a ranked set, click out to items | Affiliate revenue, placement fees, or advertising | On a retailer or a business, often via a tracking link |
| Doorway page | Nothing flows to businesses | Almost nothing; the page is a way through | Advertising, onward traffic, captured enquiries | Somewhere else entirely |
Two things the table cannot show, and both matter.
A single site can be several of these at once. A marketplace can run a directory section. A directory can publish listicles. An aggregator can operate a lead-gen form on some pages and a plain outbound link on others. Categorise the page you are on, not the brand at the top of it, and re-categorise when you move.
The category tells you the incentive, not the conduct. Knowing you are on a lead-gen site tells you what the site wants. It does not tell you whether the businesses behind the form are any good. These are separate questions and conflating them will lead you wrong in both directions.
Which one this site is
Of the six, one applies: directory. This is a directory in the structural sense. It holds descriptions of businesses and it links out to them. It transacts nothing, takes no enquiries, hosts no shopfronts, and stands between you and nobody.
We generally call it a register rather than a directory, and that is a deliberate narrowing rather than a rebrand. A register implies records with dates on them, which is the part we are actually trying to be accountable for. Every entry carries a check date, a named reviewer and the version of the method that produced it.
The other five do not describe us, and it is worth being specific about why:
- Not an aggregator. Nothing here is compiled at scale from other sources. Every entry was examined by a named person.
- Not a marketplace. No transaction happens here. We hold no payment details and take no cut of anything.
- Not a lead-gen site. We do not collect your enquiry, sell it, or route it. There is no form on an entry page.
- Not a listicle. Nothing here is ranked, scored, starred or ordered by merit. Entries are in or out against a published bar and that is the whole of it.
- Not a doorway network. No page here is templated from a place-and-category combination.
And the money question, which is the one that actually settles most of this: no business pays us anything, for inclusion, position, removal, or speed. Who pays for this site sets out every route by which money could have reached a listing decision and how each one is closed off.
In Plain English
Six words, one question each:
- Directory — a list that points you somewhere else. Ask when it was last checked.
- Aggregator — a very big list nobody opted into. Ask where the data came from.
- Marketplace — a venue you buy inside. Ask who holds the relationship afterwards.
- Lead-gen site — a form that sells your enquiry. Ask who receives it.
- Listicle — a ranked list. Ask what decided the order.
- Doorway page — a page built to be arrived at. Ask what you can actually do here.
A site can be more than one at a time, so judge the page rather than the brand. And the category only tells you the incentive; it never tells you whether the businesses are any good.
More definitions, each tied to something concrete on this site, are collected at the glossary. If you want the broader picture of how the whole category earns its money, start with how directories work.
Browse the glossary → /glossary/