Aleem Bawany_

Google Strong, but Microsoft Pays Attention to Verticals

I completely agree with your view that verticals are important. The long tail has a lot of chump change that adds up.

When it comes to searching, you sometimes want to limit your search to certain domains or always include certain keywords which is the key to a vertical search--essentially a subset of a larger set. And Google is addressing this with its Google Custom Search product.

Verticals are a subset of the broader search and even within there are many verticals. It is something that Google cannot do directly, but must be created by the community at large. If you create a vertical for cars, then you have sub-verticals for hobbyist, sales, history, green cars running on biofuels which coincides with other verticals. Google cannot possibly attempt to categorize and target these vertical and its an exercise best left to the community. Hence Google Custom Search (GCS) bridges this gap and quite beautifully I should add.

GSC allows you to limit your searches to domains, add certain key words to all searches originating from your custom search engine and best of all, the ads displayed on the side of those searches generate revenue for the webmaster responsible for creating and managing the vertical search engine. Google obviously gets revenues from the spread (what advertisers pay - what it pays websites) and both parties win. The API for GCS is very simple and powerful (easy to implement, easily manageable through web based dashboards etc).

In fact, I am fairly certain that Google will generate substantial revenue growth as this feature gains adoption and critical mass. Imagine publishing platform like WordPress and Movable Type adopting GCS as default engines (plugins also exist for web developers to integrate these into their websites within minutes).

The value proposition for publishing platforms and web developers to adopt such systems is not only the additional revenue generated when users click on ads from these search pages, but also the quality of search. Unlike enterprise Google boxes that are installed in corporate server rooms, GCS uses the very same Google technology that is people are accustomed to and benefits from all the refinements on the Google back end. The current state of search is quite lousy on these publishing platforms. They use the highly substandard search facilities built into the SQL database upon which they are built.

At the end of the day, going after verticals is not a search platform strategy, its a portal strategy (MSN Autos, et al). Google has taken the better, more correct approach and while Windows Live does offer custom searches, it suffers from the competitive drawbacks that Windows Live search faces from Google Search.