Vertical Search: Search is Changing for the Better Moderator: Stephan Spencer, President, Netconcepts

2 What Is Vertical Search? Specialty or niche search engine Can be industry specific, e.g. Innfinder.com Can be specific to media type, e.g. iTunes Do sites like Wikipedia qualify? Ask.com? Major search engines operate in vertical search space all the time –e.g. Google Blog Search, Yahoo! Podcasts, Yahoo! Audio Search, Google Video, Google Co- op, Froogle, Google US Gov’t Search, etc. –Vertical results sometimes displayed the main web search results (“vertical creep”)

3 Search Market Share According to Hitwise… –Google 60.29% –Yahoo! 22.58% –MSN 11.56% –Ask 6.53% –Everyone else <2% MySpace sending more US traffic to online retail sites than MSN Search

4 Better Living through Vertical Search Current limitations of the major engines: –Broader focus means less tailored/targated to a niche audience –A big target for search engine spam & click fraud –Less effective at developing a passionate community –Limitations due to lack of commonalities in indexed sites and in the meta data –Not many options to refine results –In other words… one size must fit all

5 Better Living through Vertical Search The smaller, more nimble vertical engines have moved in to fill the gap They are leveraging consumers as vertical search engine builders and editors (e.g. Rollyo, Google Co-Op, Eurekster’s Swickis) Price comparison engines & parametric search But the major engines aren't standing still –They are evolving to deliver individually tailored results – based on search history, profile, geolocation, mindset, social network, etc.

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