Google, which has turned the simplest interface into a monster business, continues to boost its leadership in generic search. But big companies in lucrative markets can be vulnerable. A recent post on this site pointed out that 20 percent of Google users are overwhelmed by the sheer number of search results they get and half of them don’t venture past the first results page. It’s increasingly hard for generic search engines to comb the fast-growing volume of Web information and deliver relevant results. Where is an opportunity that Google has left untouched? The answer is ‘vertical,’ or ‘domain-specific,’ search.

Although Google’s expansion to the far reaches of the World Wide Web is unstoppable, it can be argued that the company is not untouchable, that even Google can’t be all things to all people.

As reliance of search as a primary means of sourcing information continues to increase, there is an imminent demand for customized and relevant results that resonate with the needs of today’s savvy Internet user. This need exists in a wide range of verticals – people, travel, retail, jobs, sports, food; the list goes on and on. If I, for example, have a specific search query in mind pertaining to restaurants – type of food, location, price, etc. – I will probably have more luck attaining straight-forward, unambiguous results if I use a search engine dedicated to finding local eateries than if I performed an all encompassing Google search for French bistros in Manhattan’s East Village. In fact, I searched that term on Google and got 111,000 results. Even a fast reader would need 30 hours to read each search result.

One of the biggest opportunities for this model is people. Of the 12 billion searches conducted every month across the Web, people search alone accounts for 30 percent of that volume. Given that vertical search significantly cuts down the time it takes to find a certain result, it’s simply impossible to ignore the tremendous opportunity in this particular marketplace. Not only is there an opportunity to capitalize on user demand for customized search functionality, there is potential to give Google a run for its money. Isn’t it about time?

Even though search engines like Google will never go away (there will simply always be a need for some of the services offered by generic search), companies are managing to slip into key market niches that Google may never have the ability to enter.

The world of search has an interesting future to be sure. As smaller players continue to emerge, meeting user demand for specialized search and proving that they deserve as much recognition as the Googles and Yahoo!s of the world, it will be interesting to see how the market landscape evolves over the next few years. It will certainly also be interesting to see how companies, both big and small, respond to changing consumer demands. Does Google have something to worry about? Only time will tell.

Jeffrey Tinsley is founder and CEO of Reunion.com, a leading people search service that helps adults find, reconnect, and keep in touch with old friends, family, classmates, and business contacts by searching more than 750 million profiles from a variety of sources.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 26th, 2009 at 12:05 pm and is filed under Guest Authors, Majors, Verticals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.