Thursday, April 05, 2007
Vertical Search Hits New Heights
Vertical search engines are becoming so popular that we'll soon need a vertical search engine to keep track of them all.Just in the last week we have the addition of CarePilot, a home health industry search engine, Balihoo, for ad industry search, and Retrevo, which identifies the most relevant information related to consumer electronics.
These search engines are carving out a niche for underserved markets and seek to best the Googles and Yahoos of the world using unique algorithms and interface innovations.
For example, Retrevo produces four sets of search results -- one for shopping, one for manufacturer info, one for blogs and one for reviews. This enables consumers to quickly zoom in on the most relevant information to them. Searches for pricing, versus how-to, versus reviews are clearly different functions, and Retrevo smartly distinguishes the results.
The difficult part for consumers will be finding these search engines that can suit there needs. An index for vertical search is needed, and perhaps these smaller players will also need to do search marketing so that they can get their names out.
Posted By John Gartner at 01:21 PM
Permanent Link: Vertical Search Hits New Heights
| Comments (1)
Subscribe to The MarketingShift Feed