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Vertical Search is one of those brand spanking new Web 2.0 terms. All it means is a search that’s restricted to a particular topic or sub-topic. This is also know as a niche search.
The advantage to vertical search engines are that you can eliminate a lot of the stuff you don’t want before you even type anything into the query box. That’s very helpful if you’ve ever searched for anything that has a double meaning. Take the broad term “Window”. Window means a lot of different things in different contexts. You would get very different search results if you searched for “Window” in a car repair search engine, house and home search engine or a technology search engine.
While the previous example is fairly simplistic and can be easily resolved by refining your search, some searches aren’t as easy to refine. If I go to a manufacturer’s website and search for one of their products, I might be searching for sale, support, white papers, etc… In order to help organizations cope with this problem, Vortaloptics has developed some software to help them cope.
Their website is pretty thick on sales and thin on details at first glance. But they offer a few white papers to help explain things a bit better. They also offer scheduled web demos. Personally, I prefer open web demos that you can view on demand. When I’m at work investigating products for my boss, a scheduled web seminar or demo is a real pain because it ties up so much time. I prefer to do my own research at my convenience.
If you take away one thing, don’t be intimidated by the term vertical search. Most vertical search engines aren’t selling a new kind of search, they’re selling the ability to refine search better. While you can use vertical search to help people find what they want faster, it won’t have any specific effect on ranking algorithms or result quality.
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