Search Engine Focuses Shopping

Product search engine Become.com introduced a new feature that breaks down the information used during the buying process into helpful categories. Become's buying guides, product reviews, discussion forums and product details narrow the search results to provide users who are at different stages of the buying process with the answers that are the most relevant at the time. After users have done their research, shoppers can make purchases through a separate grouping of "shop" results.

Providing categorized search results from across the Web will draw more traffic (and hopefully for Become ad revenue) than offering a "walled" buyer's guide. Based on a handful of product searches, Become has done a fair job of correctly categorize the search results. It is a much more complete experience than Froogle or Shopping.com.

While for most people typing in a product name or category into Google or Yahoo is still the first line of attack, the efficiency of vertical search engines should convince more users to change their search habits.