Heard this before: Vertical search is better?

Posted on February 5, 2008 by Dave J.

I debated even posting a link to this Marketing Profs article: In Search, Bigger is not Better.

I didn’t know vertical search people were still trying to justify their existence.

The author is an owner of several wholesale-related vertical sites. For what he is doing, vertical search/directories make sense.

One of his major points is that Google et. al. fails the business searcher X percent of the time. Hmm. So do the verticals.

I made this point very specifically at Infocommerce when I spoke there a couple years ago. Usability problems and dumping people onto their advertisers home pages are huge, huge problems for verticals.

I went to the authors website and tried looking at ‘electronics’ wholesalers. The top listing clicked thru to a home page. Their ‘merchandise’ page had a list of about 20 different types of products they sell. Thats it. Not hotlinked to more info, no list of name brands. Nada zip. That sucked.

I call this ‘dumpage’, as in you get dumped onto a website. Its not a kind word, sorry.

While it is easy to blame the advertiser for a sucky website, the directory has to do a better job of clarifying what products their advertisers sell and providing more data. According to the article’s author, that is part of the added value of vertical sites: “customized algorithms and search strings put relevant results directly in front of targeted B2B buyers.”

Much of the logic in this article is typical of the usual vertical directory play, without specifics about successes. This guy’s just lucky he picked a good market in wholesaling where the demand is large and the bar is low.

Take a look at Globalspec or Zillow who integrate additional detail about the listings they provide. That’s added value that can overcome much of the usability problems users might encounter. There must be a wholesaling site that is trying to integrate actual inventory of advertisers–that would be what I would expect.

Vertical search sites, you can’t keep partying like its 2005. (And it was already old in 2005!)

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  • Jeff

    You have good points but some vertical sites are focused on Value Add. SupplyFrame.com, an electronics industry search engine (I work there) has not only provided content but a special ad unit called a deep dive that takes a user directly into the product folder in the advertisers site. The goal here is to answer an engineers question about a component as rapidly as possible. Most of the questions are answered on Supplyframe itself, and one more click goes straight to the deepest and most authoritative information available from the advertising manufacturer.

  • Jeff

    You have good points but some vertical sites are focused on Value Add. SupplyFrame.com, an electronics industry search engine (I work there) has not only provided content but a special ad unit called a deep dive that takes a user directly into the product folder in the advertisers site. The goal here is to answer an engineers question about a component as rapidly as possible. Most of the questions are answered on Supplyframe itself, and one more click goes straight to the deepest and most authoritative information available from the advertising manufacturer.

  • Dave J.

    Thanks Jeff. I see a lot of extra value in SupplyFrame. Just showed it to one of our EEs. Great!

  • Dave J.

    Thanks Jeff. I see a lot of extra value in SupplyFrame. Just showed it to one of our EEs. Great!

  • Ken

    Hi Dave,At LabX we’re close to a vertical search, but classified better as a marketplace for used equipment and new technologies. We took the approach you mentioned about three years ago and have included over 150,000 used equipment listings from participating vendors websites/inventories. So instead of pushing people to specific pages around the Internet (which surprisingly we did back in 1998) we now display the individual products just like any listing posted on LabX. Need a < HREF="http://www.labx.com/v2/adsearch/resultsnew.cfm?sw=TEKTRONIX%202465A&mr=25" REL="nofollow">TEKTRONIX 2465A oscilloscope<>? You can search LabX and find 8 from various dealer inventories. While this works amazingly well for used equipment (every item is unique), the approach for new equipment would start looking like an Amazon or some type of comparison website that has 50 of everything and it’s all identically priced. The proof is in the pudding as thousands of B2B sales occur each month within these inventories; users are free to interact with the exact products they need on a platform they are familiar with. It does show that Vertical Search will need to get the end user as far down the path with as much detail as possible to be successful. And if the end result is buying a product, then will a marketplace style like LabX or a Google/Froogle type system be the ultimate goal?

  • Ken

    ? You can search LabX and find 8 from various dealer inventories. While this works amazingly well for used equipment (every item is unique), the approach for new equipment would start looking like an Amazon or some type of comparison website that has 50 of everything and it’s all identically priced. The proof is in the pudding as thousands of B2B sales occur each month within these inventories; users are free to interact with the exact products they need on a platform they are familiar with. It does show that Vertical Search will need to get the end user as far down the path with as much detail as possible to be successful. And if the end result is buying a product, then will a marketplace style like LabX or a Google/Froogle type system be the ultimate goal?

  • Dave J.

    Ken–LabX has a lot going for it. I’ve been impressed. Aggregating the product availability has to be of great help to the shoppers.

  • Dave J.

    Ken–LabX has a lot going for it. I’ve been impressed. Aggregating the product availability has to be of great help to the shoppers.