I don’t remember having a Google moment (where I stood up and said this is that much better than everything else) the first time I used Google. I probably had my head too far into the incredible ROI I was getting on Goto to really take notice.
However, Kosmix’s new travel search engine provided me with that type of ‘ah-ha‘ moment. Check out the new vertical search experiences at Kosmix Health, Kosmix Travel, and Kosmix Politics.
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What’s your take on vertical search? It seems like oftentimes we focus on the big players (e.g., shopping.com, BizRate, PriceGrabber), which are all general comparison engines. We’re currently in the process of developing out a vertical comparison engine focused on scrapbooking (http://www.scrapbookfinds.com/), which is currently about a 2.5 billion dollar per year industry (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1846271). There are skads of large and small e-commerce sites that list scrapbooking products (including ebay), and, on the whole, most of them are unsightly and difficult to use. It’s a situation that seems to be begging for comparison search. The trouble is that, up until now, any consumer wanting to do this would find little help from the general comparison engines.
What place does vertical comparison search have in all of this? How does the notion of vertical search stack up against the idea of supposedly comprehensive general engines?
It will be interesting to see how all these vertical search companies plan to generate traffic and whether they have any other monetization plans besides paid search.