Is vertical search emerging? Or oozing?

An anonymous reader alerted me to a new white paper on the future of vertical search:

"The Emerging Opportunity in Vertical Search" (your pick: register-first or direct to the PDF) by SearchChannel & Slack Barshinger.

The paper starts with survey results, building up the case for vertical search, which SearchChannel sells software to enable. That's right, you can start your own vertical site by just buying some software. The paper probably would serve as good content for a business plan so you could afford the software, too. What it ignores is actual usage of vertical search.

The paper cites another white paper ($395) by Outsell that showed a 32% 'failure rate' of vertical/industry searches on general search engines. Then we get a table of information that users want that they can't get/find, in this order:

1. Competitor info
2. Market info
3. Salaries
4. Pricing
5. Private company info
6. Product info
7. Training, 8. databases, and 9. industry reports

Well, no wonder 32% of searches fail! Even a vertical search site isn't going to have the top 4-5 items here. Maybe providing this info would be the addictive crack that would make vertical search successful, but the paper doesn't address this list.

The second section of the white paper is a site-by-site review of major vertical search sites. These are more summaries than reviews, and the list is by no means comprehensive or weighted by importance.

B2Blog's take:
This is a great introduction to Vertical Search as a distinct segment, but it doesn't make a compelling case for usage/growth of the segment, which is what it's title promises. And it doesn't address the roadblocks to success. The list I provided above is probably the most valuable content worth pondering.

My take: as (mostly mediocre) vertical search sites continue proliferate, users are only going to be jaded and continue to return to Google et. al. Until one comes along with 'crack content', that is.

Hints for making a little money on the side

Starting a new site to earn money requires time in the beginning. The easiest to start is a home affiliate business site, I think. It will require research to be carried out to see which companies offer good products and nice referral fees. But before you can start, domain registration and website hosting research has to be done. The best web hosting packages can be easily located online. I'd also consider running through companies that are offering reseller hosting so you can have more than one domain, if needed.

If you don't have it already, get a wireless internet service so the site can be uploaded and maintained conveniently wherever you are. Actually creating the site itself will take some work, but there are some neat free tools that make it easier, like WordPress. By learning to constantly manage SEO and search engine submission, the site can do well in search engine ranking and develop enough traffic that proposals will fly in for banner advertising on the site.