By Kaitlin Villanova
While Google is allowing the infiltration of blogs to dominate organic search, marketers are searching (no pun intended) for a way to massage their data and present it in a manner that is simple and easy to consume. According to gigaom.com the definition of vertical search is “a specialized search engine that mines data for one narrow niche of the market place.” The idea of vertical search can be compared to Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail (a theory born in a 2004 issue of Wired Magazine) the colloquial name for a long-known feature of statistical distributions. This idea can be seen in business models such as Amazon, Netflix, lala.com and many more. The idea of selling more of less is a challenge to marketers as their consumer transforms in to a content creator. Vertical search will allow for the correct content to connect to the right consumer. This content can reach the appropriate consumer through the most critical component of vertical search, which is trust. It is necessary to trust that the content provided in the aggregated search of your choice has a dedicated contributing community to ensure that the information remains relevant. Steven Baker, CEO of Reed Search agrees “even though there is increasing attention scarcity, more community sites are popping up.” Every brand has an opportunity to find the niche that has the Goldilocks phenomenon…fits juuust right. (I was hoping to coin that term myself but thanks to Wiki search it’s already been done)
5 years ago I started going to conferences… the first one was Search Engine Strategies in San Jose. I was not making much money at the time but was making enough to support myself. I attended every session and had 2 notebooks full of notes. It made all the difference in the world to me. That was 5 years ago though. Since then I have attended over 60 various industry events and I would say the 2 that have stuck out in my mind the biggest was that first one and then last year at the techcrunch40 conference.
Posted by: | March 07, 2009 at 10:20 AM