Vertical search

Vertical search, part of a larger sub grouping known as “specialized” search, is a relatively new tier in the Internet search industry consisting of search engines that focus on specific businesses. While Google, Yahoo!, and the like will continue to dominate the online consumer search market, research analysts say myriad specialized search engines are emerging to address the particular information needs of niche audiences and professions.
Vertical search vs. broad-based search
To see how these sites differ, it’s helpful to know how they are designed. The term “search engine” refers to a software program that searches the Web and Usenet groups to find documents for a specified keyword and returns a list of documents in which the keyword was found.
Broad-based search engines such as Google or Yahoo fetch very large numbers of documents using a Web crawler. Another program called an indexer then reads these documents and creates a search index based on words contained in each document. Each search engine uses a proprietary algorithm to create its indexes so that, ideally, only meaningful results are returned for each query.
What’s driving growth in vertical search?
Advertisers on vertical sites are able to reach potential customers who are much closer to making a purchase decision than the average user on Google or Yahoo, The cost of advertising on the large search engines is also likely to drive more marketers to vertical search.
“Increasing competition and rising keyword prices should motivate search marketers to look for newer, viable opportunities to diversify their incoming traffic.