Vertical Search Philip James, CEO, Snooth

What changed? Web got big Search engines index small portion % indexed shrinking Poor results for focused searches Endless tweaking of search terms Need for specialized search Videos, jobs, medical data, blogs etc

Its easy, when you are niche! Smaller = higher relevancy Return essential content only Balance specialization vs market size Dominate your space Room for 1 to 3 players each

Getting the word out From a search engine! SEO – if you have the content SEM – if you have a fast conversion cycle Or SMM – depending on the business How scalable are these?

Delivering better search New content search – eg. blogs, images, videos “Canned Search” – eg. Dog friendly employers Parametric Search – more like DB queries Semantic Search – implied meaning Filters and relevant post search tools

Killer combo: parametric / semantic No need to ‘discover’ intent, its already clear Parametrics and Semantics in action “Spicy cali cab that’s good with beef” Where zip = 10003

Filters and post search Search refinement Price sliders Buttons Dropdowns Tags Search ‘within’ results

You still need a biz model… Advertising - sponsored listings, banner ads At $50 eCPM need 80 million pageviews / month to make $50m annually Referrals / lead generation (clicks or sale) At 10% per sale affiliate fees, need to refer $500 million in sales. If $100 per transaction then generate 14,000 transactions daily

And so… Pick your vertical carefully Weigh up market size / competition Scalable acquisition of users Provide a clear search benefit Ensure pageview volume or lead gen potential

Vertical Search Philip James, CEO, Snooth