Value in Those Vertical Search Engine Exhaust Fumes

Posted by Iain Fletcher | December 14, 2007

CMPMedica, a division of United Business Media and a Convera vertical search customer, are now releasing what they call "The Clinical Search Terms Quarterly Report". We can learn from this report, for example, that the top five subjects psychiatrists searched for during the latest quarter are:

Mood stabilizer
Unipolar vs. bipolar depression
Asperger's
Hypomania
Bipolar

This is information is no doubt more meaningful to a professional psychiatrist than it is to me.

Of course, analyzing search log files and search trends is nothing new. Somewhere out there on the Web, you can learn whether Paris Hilton or Britney Spears are currently causing the most buzz. Thanks to Google Trends you can have fun with national stereotypes. It is a sign of the times that the English search for information about cricket less often than the peoples of India, Pakistan, South Africa and Australia. Each of those fine nations has beaten us recently at the sport we invented. You could no doubt have guessed that the city responsible for the most searches on politics is Washington DC, and you can work out exactly when they locked Paris Hilton up, and when they set her free again, by the huge spikes in search traffic on her trends graph. Why, by the way, are the good people of Mexico Ms. Hilton's greatest fans?

Thanks to the focused demographics of a professional vertical search community, publishers can expect to derive value from search logs. Used in real-time, they can give the publisher's editorial staff up to the minute intelligence about the thoughts of the community they seek to lead, and that insight can help editors to strengthen their leadership position. Search logs can be monetized by publishers in some cases, as they contain market intelligence of value to trade advertisers. Vertical search applications that extend the publisher's brand by covering "the best of the Web" in addition to proprietary content, can also help uncover content gaps.

Anyone who has read John Battelle's book "The search" will understand the importance Google attach to these search engine exhaust fumes. Any publisher who builds worthwhile traffic volumes from a vertical search application can reap those same strategic benefits.