Vertical Search Engines are Domain Knowledge Silos
Published 3 years ago by James Simmons
It seems as though nothing short of a new buzzword can stop the burst of activity in the vertical search market, and who are we to complain? Vertical search engines differ from their horizontal brethren (who attempt to index the Web as a whole) by focusing on a single topic or niche about which to index information from the Web. Often, a VSE can deliver results with much greater relevancy and accuracy than major horizontal players like Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft.
There is more to be gained from vertical search than meets the eye. Vertical search engines give us a more complete look into domain knowledge and can help in the creation of domain-specific ontologies, especially those domains that require dedicated and qualified domain experts to construct, which is usually both difficult and expensive. Therefore, we can look at vertical search engines as rich silos of domain knowledge that can be leveraged to produce domain-specific ontologies that would otherwise be too costly to develop or would require expertise in a field inaccessible by current resources.
Doesn't that sound like a lot of fun? It does to me. Dozens of new vertical search engines (and aggregators of their kind) appear each month to feed our insatiable appetite for relevant, fresh information. It will be interesting to see how the horizontal search players address the issue of relevancy and accuracy within specific domains, as well as how vertical search will impact the development of domain-specific ontologies, natural language processing, and of course the Semantic Web.
About the author
It's my goal to help bring about the Semantic Web. I also like to explore related topics like natural language processing, information retrieval, and web evolution. I'm the primary author of Semantic Focus and I'm currently working on several Semantic Web projects.
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Posted by David Mead on April 23, 2007 at 8:25am
It does sound like a lot of fun. Do you have any examples of a VSE, gotta use that in a presentation somewhere :-), that is having traction? Would GYM look at successful ones the same they used to look to DMOZ? Love the blog BTW.
Posted by James Simmons on April 28, 2007 at 6:31pm
Read/Write Web has the best list of vertical search engines that I've seen (http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/top_100_alternative_search_engines_mar07.php). Regarding DMOZ, if you referring to the issue of content from the entire directory being duplicated thousands of times across the Internet, I do not think that search engines will attempt to penalize these new vertical search engines unless they are not bringing anything new to the table. Freely distributable content (e.g. DMOZ and Wikipedia) clones do not have a place on SERPs, even if the information is still valid. These sites get removed from listings because they have no authority, they are not the originator of the content, and they are basically just regurgitation. If you are asking if they (GYM) might consider vertical search engines as authorities of their domain (as many search engines have with DMOZ) then I don't doubt it. Vertical search is often (but not always) where you will find the most authoritative and informative content simply because those engines are able to dig deeper into a single topic. Let me know if I managed to not answer your question with all that ;)
Posted by Andrew Hendel on April 13, 2010 at 11:33pm
James,
I agree. I've been frustrated on a number of occasions with the difficulty of finding specific nuanced information on Google. That's why I created a human-powered directory based search engine call LionSurfer. It can be found at http://www.lionsurfer.com
I'd be curious to know your thoughts on LionSurfer. Below is a brief description:
LionSurfer is a human-powered directory-based search engine. Users submit URLs into categories in the directory. Using LionSurfer’s algorithm, the URLs are placed into the category that received the most submissions. LionSurfer is integrated with Google's search technology to create the most useful tool for finding information on the web.
Posted by Domain Names on May 17, 2010 at 12:27am
Hiiiiiiiiii
It does sound like a lot of fun. Do you have any examples of a VSE, gotta use that in a presentation somewhere :-), that is having traction? Would GYM look at successful ones the same they used to look to DMOZ? Love the blog BTW.
joseph
Domain Names