Vertical Search: B2B Survey Says ... Blazing Hot at SearchEngineWatch

Posted by Iain Fletcher | January 14, 2008

It was good to see some coverage of the Convera sponsored E-consultancy survey over at SearchEngineWatch.

In the SEW article, Eric Enge asked three very perinent questions. Here's how I'd answer them. I've paraphrased Eric's questions here for brevity, Eric's original article on the survey can be found here.

Question 1. How will end users recognise that they are using a vertical search engine?

I agree that recognition is going to require effort on behalf of the publisher to publicise the service on their websites, and elsewhere ( vertical search toolbars, syndicatable search boxes, widgets etc.). It is up to vertical search technology providers like us to make it as easy and painless as possible for publishers to do that, but publishers need to pull their weight. With pretty much half of all online advertising spend being search-related these days, publishers increasingly recognize the need to take search seriously.

Question 2. Will end users recognise enough added value?

As Eric suggests , 20% better is not going to be good enough. Convera are primarily involved with publishers addressing niche professional audiences (medics, microscopists, logistics professionals, insurance brokers, dentists, hedge fund traders etc.). Our experience is that the core knowledge needed to put together highly focused search experiences for specific audiences is already there in the heads of publishing organisations' editorial staff, who've typically been living and breathing the subject matter for half of their lives already. If we can use technology to make it really easy for editorial staff to directly control and maintain the look, feel and functionality of search results, then there is a chance to highly differentiate end user search experience from that of the habitually used big horizonal players.

Question 3. Will publishers put effort in?

They do need to put the effort in. Again, a key issue is how easy the process can be made for the publisher. More specifically, how can we make it easy for the editorial people with the specialist knowledge of what the audience needs to control and maintain the search application? Having spent the last thirteen years in the enterprise search space, I can assure you that it's not just publishers who struggle with this - all sectors of industry, commerce and government do. As with many kinds of IT project, the modus operandi in enterprise search for more than a decade has typically been to put together a spec that includes everything you could possibly need, including the kitchen sink, buy a big software license for a product with masses of capability, spend some money (usually not enough) to have it professionally installed and configured but using only a fraction of the available functionality, then leave it in a fixed state for the next 4 years to slowly go out of date. This doesn't work particularly well on the intranet of a big bank or a government department. It is 180 degrees out of alignment with the iterative digital marketing process of try something / measure what happens / adjust something / measure it again....

The best way to overcome these challenges is for publishers to use a hosted vertical search service, configured specifically for the task, and controlled, updated and maintained (daily if necessary) directly by the publisher's editorial staff through an easy to use dashboard. Convera's publishing customers do this via our Publisher Control Panel.