Every Wednesday on AltSearchEngines, we like to get the straight scoop directly from an alternative search engine CEO. Today we are visiting with Richard Robinson, CEO of London-based TickEx, to find out how vertical search is revolutionizing the ticket industry.
I know a lot about the band Arcade Fire. I know that they’re based in Montreal, that two of the members are actually from Texas, and that the 2005 Coachella festival was the event that made them a household name. Why do I know all of this? Because I did a Google search looking for tickets to see if they had any shows coming up here in London. Unfortunately, actually locating a legitimate vendor selling tickets to upcoming Arcade Fire concerts was like looking for a needle in a haystack. As the CEO of a company specializing in vertical search for the ticket industry, I’m constantly asked “why can’t people just use Google?” It’s a legitimate question –- after all, they have become such a dominant player in the search industry that “to Google” has now become a verb.The problem is that Google’s algorithms are based on links and relevance which team to be heavily time based, i.e. built up over many months. Most ticket listings, however, are only relevant for a few weeks, meaning that they get shuffled to the bottom of the deck. Ironically, the major reason for Google’s success — its search technology — is precisely the thing that keeps it from being a good source for information on tickets.When it comes to searching for tickets, it really is about having the right tool for the job, and just because Google, Yahoo! and the other major search engines are popular doesn’t mean they can deliver. Think of it this way: the Honda Accord is the most popular car in the United States, but you wouldn’t use one to race in the Indy 500.
Leading analyst firms are seeing the value of vertical search as more than picking up Google’s leftovers because specialty sites are filling a need that general engines simply cannot meet. According to New York-based Jupiter Research, “Vertical search providers will play an important role in the paid search market in the next five years,” and it’s not hard to see why. Not only is vertical search giving consumers a better way to buy online, it’s also giving vendors a more cost-effective way to sell their tickets.
Simply put, the economics of selling a ticket through a major search engine don’t make a lot of sense because of the high cost of buying AdWords or other paid placements. After all, where is the value in paying $100 in customer acquisition costs for a $35 ticket? In addition to creating a better price point for sellers, vertical search engines also attract people who are more likely to buy rather than just browse. As analyst Greg Sterling, one of the gurus in the space, puts it “Someone doing a search on Edmunds.com, an automobile search engine, is probably more serious about buying a car than someone doing a car search on a general search engine.”
The idea of vertical search isn’t new – specialized sites for airline tickets have been around for more than a decade – but what is exciting is that the technology has evolved to a point where a single site can now legitimately claim to have just about every ticket listed, indexed and fully searchable. That’s good news for people who just want to be able to find relevant results without having to spend hours trolling through irrelevant sites looking for a place to search for – and buy – tickets.
Так десятки миллионов пользователей узнали о новом механизме поиска. Когда конкуренты спохватились, было поздно – сеть не видывала еще сайта популярнее, чем Google. На его долю, по оценкам аналитиков из маркетингового агентства comScore, приходится 60% всех поисковых запросов. На втором месте с большим отрывом – Yahoo! (14%), а великий Microsoft плетется в самом хвосте (4%). Появился глагол to google, означающий «поискать в Интернете». Одновременно Google придумал, как извлекать из своего доминирующего положения очень большие деньги – свершился переворот в интернет-рекламе. По данным на прошлую неделю, его акционерный капитал оценивается в $200 млрд, что в пять с лишним раз больше, чем у Yahoo!, и составляет почти три четверти капитала Microsoft.
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