Philip James, CEO, Snooth, Inc.
What changed? Web got big
– search engines index small portion
– poor results for focused searches
– endless tweaking of search terms
– need for specialized search
– videos, jobs, medical data, blogs, etc
Its easy when you are a niche
– smaller = high relevancy
– balance specialization vs market size
– dominate your space
– room for 1 to 3 players each
Getting the word out
– From a search engine
– SEO – if you have content
– SEM – if you have a fast conversion cycle
OR
– SMM – depending on the business
How scalable are these?
Delivering better search
– new content search – blogs, images, bideos
– canned search – dog friendly employers
– parametric search – more like DB queries (example: weather.com or kayak.com or searches that you select a price or some range)
– semantic search – implied meaning
– filters and relevant post search tools
Killer combo: parametric/semantic
– no need to disco er intent, its already clear
– parametrics and semantics in action
*showed financials of what you will need eCPM and page views and went over it*
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Paul Forster, CEO, Indeed
vertical search charactersistics
– specialized data
– hidden web
– structured or semi-structured
– time sensitive
– comprehensive search
Examples?
– travel – kayak.com
– jobs – indeed.com
– shopping – become.com
Why does this matter to marketers?
– are you looking for people with specialized intent?
– focused audiences (ex. search indeed for search engine marketing jobs and search from SF… you know their location and intent)
– Google is bad at it
– spectacular growth (shows a growth chart where vertical search engines are way above other sites)
How do you market there?
– organic inclusion (can you provide a feed?)
– optimize your feeds (check to be sure its complete and correct)
– accuracy
– reliability
– dedupe
– paid inclusion
– emails, subscriptions and more
– kayak has ppc and sponsoring
Questions to ask?
– what audience am i trying to reach?
– what kind of vertical search sites to use?
– does a prospective site get enough traffic?
– how significant is their partner network?
– is free organic inclusion on offer?
– have I optimized my feeds?
– what ad products does the site offer?
– how can I track results and ROI
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Jonathan Dingman, VP of Marketing, Digitally Imported Inc.
Vertical Search
How do you stand out? Be unique.
Content is king – with a lyrics site you are going to have the same content. What you need to do is make yourself unique.
Can you keep up?
– fast moving results
– staying on top of SEO
– SEO? links
– SEO? Keywords
– SEO? Stay relevant
Whats the bottom line?
– be unique
– bring visitors back to your site
– be memorable
– be unique
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Q. Why should I choose vertical search over just trying to optimize for Google/MSN/Yahoo?
A. Traffic is growing very fast on Vertical search engines. *said a stat about the growth but missed it*
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Live blogged by Dave Rohrer