Vertical Search Resurgent
July 16, 2008
Several years ago, the mantra among some of my financial service clients was, “Vertical search.” What’s vertical search? It is two ideas rolled into one buzzword.
A Casual Definition
First, the content processed by the search system is about a particular topic. Different database producers define the scope of a database in idiosyncratic ways. In Compendex, an index of engineering information, you can find a wide range of engineering topics, covering many fields. You can find information about environmental engineering, which looks to me as if the article belongs in a database about chemistry. But in general, the processed information fits into a topical basket. Chemical Abstracts is about chemistry, but the span of chemistry is wide. Nevertheless, the guts of a vertical search engine is bounded content that is brought together in a generally useful topic area. When you look for information about travel, you are using a vertical search engine. For example, Orbitz.com and BookIt.com are vertical search engines.
Second, the content has to searchable. So, vertical content collections require a search engine. Vertical content is often structured. When you look for a flight from LGA to SFO, you fill in dates, times, department airport code, arrival airport code, etc. A parametric query is a fancy way of saying, “Training wheels for a SQL query.” But vertical content collections can be processed by the menagerie of text processing systems. When you query, the Dr. Koop Web site, you are using the type of search system provided by Live.com and Yahoo.com.
Source: http://www.sonirodban.com/images/wheel.jpg
Google is a horizontal search engine, but it is also a vertical search engine. If you navigate to Google’s advanced search page, which is accessed by fewer than three percent of Google’s users, you will find links to a number of vertical search engines; for example, the Microsoft collection and the US government collection. Note: Google’s universal search is a bit of marketing swizzle that means Google can take a query and pass it across indexes for discrete collections. The results are pulled together, deduplicated, and relevance ranked. This is a function available from Vivisimo since 2000. Universal search Google style displays maps and images, but it is far from cutting edge technology save for one Google factor–scale.
Why am I writing about vertical search when the topic for me came and went years ago. In fact, at the height of the vertical search frenzy I dismissed the hype. Innovators, unaware of the vertical nature of commercial databases 30 years ago, thought something quite new was at hand. Wrong. Google’s horizontal information dominance forced other companies to find niches where Google was not doing a good job or any job for that matter.
Vertical search flashed on my radar today (July 15, 2008) when I flipped through the wonderful information in my tireless news reader.
Autonomy announced:
that Foundography, a subsidiary of Nexus Business Media Ltd, has selected Autonomy to power vertical search on its website (sic) for IT professionals: foundographytech.com. The site enables business information users to access only the information they want and through Autonomy’s unique conceptual capabilities delivers an ‘already found’ set of results, providing pertinent information users may not have known existed. The site also presents a unique proposition for advertisers, providing conceptually targeted ad selling.
Google Goes Vertical
When I was researching The Google Legacy (Infonortics, 2005), it became evident that Google was going vertical. As early as 2003, information suggested that Google had designs of special collections (Google Books), topic areas (Google Health), and services (Google Travel and Google Real Estate). Today in 2008, Google has rolled out Book, Health, and a tiny bit of travel. If you navigate to Google.com and enter this query, you will see what I mean about travel information (hopefully). If the link is bad, just key sfo lga and you will see an embedded parametric search function. Make a selection and you see the prime real estate and a potentially important shift in search engine optimization techniques.
A Future for Vertical
If I were running the Dr. Koop Web site, I would shift from indexing to value added services. Google is going to dominate vertical search on the Web. If I were a search engine vendor, I would become familiar with the procedures required to convert the Google Search Appliance into a federator with filters. In the Web site world, I would try to position myself so that the free Google Customer Search Engine does not become the obvious choice.
In my opinion, unless Google falls on its sword, the company is positioned to chomp off verticals at its own pace. In one of my writings for BearStearns, I described a programmable search engine. Google has not exposed much of this technology. You can read about it in this patent document, US2007/0038616. I am no lawyer, and you may need one plus an engineer to figure out what Google has invented. It sure looks to me as if the programmable search engine is capable of sucking structured data so prevalent in vertical search engines right into the Googleplex. You need to read this patent document yourself and not worry about this addled goose’s take on PSE.
Observations
Vertical search is easy to understand because the content is generally about some topic. This narrowness of editorial scope helps users find information on a subtopic within the vertical collection. A query sent to a vertical search engine like Orbitz.com returns travel-related information. Niches are ideal for vertical search. The problem is to find a way to make money from vertical search. Autonomy obviously has. I am not so sure about the majority of vertical search systems.
In the vertical search “space”, I think Google is a serious threat. But Microsoft offers its health system, and the MSDN content is a vertical search system as well. iTunes is a vertical search system and not even Mr. Bezos’ Amazon has been able to cripple Apple’s media vertical.
Vertical search is important, but it is old hat. What’s new is the threat that Googzilla will decide to enter your walled garden. That’s probably not the way to start your day.
Agree? Disagree?
Stephen Arnold, July 16, 2008
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