Rand’s Search Future Theories And Vertical Search Engine Optimization

Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Monday, 11 of February , 2008 at 8:19 am

Rand Fishkin’s blog post about the biggest threats facing Google is a very interesting read. I’d just like to say that the one I find most intriguing and think is the biggest real threat is #3.

Rand theorizes that vertical search will become more popular and that startups in the search field have a better chance of out-competing Google on a single vertical niche than they do on search in general. Only, it isn’t so much of a theory as a fact.

As the web becomes increasingly large and complex, it’s very possible that web surfing and web searching habits will evolve. Brands like Expedia, Zillow and iMedix are all competing in the arenas of vertical search, hoping that when web users think travel, real estate or health care, they won’t turn to Google, but instead will go directly to their favorite vertical engine. Naturally, Google’s already planning for this with search in dozens of additional verticals - news, books, academia, images, maps, etc. but beating the search giant in any one of these niches is certainly far simpler than in the broader realm of web wide search.

Every day there are millions of new web pages added to the Web, making it more difficult to crawl and index the ones that are there. It is becoming increasingly more difficult for new websites to gain authority. Meanwhile, spam is taking over. Google’s search results are nowhere near as high a quality as they were in 2000 or 2001 even though the search engine’s technology is far superior than it was then. The spam problem will get even more out of hand as more and more webmasters learn the intricacies of search engine optimization and more web pages are developed and the search robots have more pages to sift through. Google has its job cut out for it right now.

The search landscape is ripe for vertical search, more now than ever. Local search is perhaps the biggest vertical right now as the major search engines compete for the upper hand. Mobile search is still young but a growing interest as well. I think we’ll see the day real soon where Google might have dominance in a particular vertical while Microsoft, Ask, or Yahoo (perhaps even Micro-hoo) will hold dominance in another vertical. The major search engines will have to pick where it is they want to excel and leave the rest to the field of competition. This will open many doors for new startups to pick a vertical to focus on. I think you could even see some of the existing verticals at the major search engines spin off into their own independent companies, complete with branding and marketing plans of their own.

This type of specialization would follow the same timeline that traditional industries follow. First there is a new innovation. The innovation catches on slowly and picks up momentum as economic development makes it more affordable. As more people adopt and adapt, demand for improvements force suppliers to keep innovating. As consumers get more savvy and sophisticated with the use of the innovation, more innovators enter the field with R&D of their own. New developments splinter off into unique niches that are subsets of the original innovation and micro-markets are developed, first by the major players then by fans of the players who take their innovations and improve upon them for smaller niche markets.

It seems like search is following a similar timeline. Vertical search seems like the next logical level as more and more companies enter the search field looking for their area of specialization.

Category: Search Engines

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