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Our next caller is Joel from Cleveland, who asks: "Writing on the wall for vertical search engines?"
Joel: grr grr grumble grr.
Jason: tisk tisk Dr. HRSEO. Haven't I been telling you for years that vertical search is a feature NOT a product?
What's that Joel? You're wondering if Google Base is the answer? If only.
Joel: GoogleBase is seeing improvement!
Jason: There's only one direction for those guys can go and it's up. Thank god they are finally showing some signs of life as we (and our customers) are rooting for them. Here's some hard data to go with your cheese and crackers dear sir: Since July 27, 2006 Jobster's customers have posted 12,197 jobs via Jobster's hiring tools onto Googlebase. Those 12,197 jobs have received a grand total of 124 candidates from Googlebase. (No, that is not a typo. 124 is the actual number). Only 13 of those jobs -- 13 out of 12,197 -- have ever received more than 1 candidate. And only 2 jobs have received more than 2 candidates. So, yes, there's plenty of room for improvement.
What's that I hear in the background? Is that Vivian Green belting Emotional Roller Coaster?
Jason: Buckle yourself in and hold on tight. We're just getting started.
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Oh, I can't wait to see this one unfold. 15-15, Goldberg serves.
Recruitmeme, Mar 13, 2007 2:21:30 PM
I'm not so sure it is 15-15, but it is Goldberg serving...a full plate of rage and cold peas.
DrBluto, Mar 13, 2007 3:48:55 PM
Sorry sports fans, Joel and are I are more apt to take it out in a NCAA bracket than in front of you'all.
Jason Goldberg, Mar 13, 2007 7:54:08 PM
Ah, no need to call it out here...just a fun volley back Jason to Joel's post the other day. :)
Recruitmeme, Mar 14, 2007 9:46:44 AM
Will Vertical Search and Social Networks combine to challenge Google?
Publishers and advertising agencies have a very difficult challenge ahead as traditional “horizontal” media like newspapers, TV channels and magazines see their traditional demographics and advertising revenue streams fragmented by the increasing preference of consumers for online access and the huge presence of Google eroding their audiences and potential future revenues.
Perhaps they should remember the words of Sun Tsu, who once said “When the enemy is too strong to attack directly, then attack something he holds dear. Know that in all things he cannot be superior. Somewhere there is a gap in the armour, a weakness that can be attacked instead.” Google’s major strength – the clean search box and the ease of use, commoditised ad revenues, perhaps masks its principal weakness. As media content and advertising revenues fragment to serve thousands and thousands of “vertical” online communities based on lifestyle or profession, Google may suddenly seem standardised, commoditised and lacking a sense of unique community. Is Google becoming Wal-Mart, while vertical communities may prefer Harrods?
Whilst “horizontal” media companies are similar to supermarkets, specialist professional “vertical” publishers are very specific in serving niche communities with totally relevant content and requirements. However, the publisher’s principal operating difficulty in becoming adaptive to this asymmetric Web 2.0 opportunity is that most tend to run each of their print, exhibition and online titles/businesses as separate profit and loss items on their balance sheet. As a by-product the vast majority tend not to have a centralised IT infrastructure or the human IT skill sets to manage a large scale data centre or web spidering facility – the prerequisites needed to datamine and aggregate open source, user generated and blog content to create vertical slices of the Web that are relevant for their audiences. Publishers will also need to integrate this content into the online extensions of their print brands and thereby allowing advertisers the opportunity to target high value communities. In addition, the datamining, crawling and hosting to identify relevant open source content will also need to be a continual process due to the continual growth of user generated and open source content.
Convera have two very large data centres, an extensive web spidering capability and a web index. Convera are now partnering with a significant number of specialist B2B publishers to create a range of vertical websites for specific professional communities. The first example of this is Searchmedica.com with UBM.
In building the deep vertical search portals, the key is to reach into the specific professional community in a number of ways. First, you can combined the trade publisher's knowledge and contacts in the profession with community appeals that engage the specific audience in a way that general search cannot, and also by taking special care to use the taxonomies common to the targeted profession in organizing search results so that the user feels more at home and among peers. Building a good vertical engine can be costly and time consuming, and getting a critical mass of users to de-Google their search habits into more specialized engines is potentially a tough sell. However, in tests with focus groups from different professional communities to test these vertical search properties against Google, the results are hugely encouraging.
In building the beta test sites, the specialist publishers are providing Convera with "white lists" of data sources online and websites that would be most relevant to its readers so that the searches are restricted to reliable and trusted information. Publishers are also securing agreements with owners of key proprietary content not normally crawled by Google by leveraging some of its contacts and resources so that Convera can crawl and deliver some of their proprietary content. Another key consideration is getting the user community engaged in the process as co-developers. No matter how bad the results at Google or Yahoo may be for a given professional segment, the interface is familiar and the destination is always at hand. Getting users to think of a specialized brand as the go-to place for business information is the challenge.
A number of publishers are actively assessing the potential of adding social networking to the mix in order to get professionals interacting with each other and adding weekly podcasts by industry experts on issues affecting the community – these additional services will create more community loyalty and also additional advertising and sponsorship opportunities.
The publishers can also use their print titles to drive the audience to the new online areas and this will also assist the transition of their high value print ad revenues to online. Publishers also have exhibitions, seminars, events and email newsletters to assist this transition – and recent research suggests that professional communities will actively attend seminars and events to meet peers and other members of their community. The theory goes that once you get some professionals involved then the viral mechanism or behavioural “Hive Mind” also kicks in and professional workers start referring to the vertical portal as a community source. It is also allows advertisers and public relations organisations access to a clearly defined, affluent, influential and stable audience.
Google does not allow you to have a beer with a potential business partner - it doesn't have that sense of community. But Google is fighting back – the recent launch of Google Custom Search and acquisition of teenage social network sites indicates they are aware of their weakness – but specialist publishers see this as a Trojan Horse. Social networks for teenagers are highly transient and target a demographic that is volatile, unpredictable and has a low level of disposable income – whereas a social network alongside a vertical search service for 22,000 bio-chemists, 55,000 UK GP’s, 55,000 insurance risk assessors or 120,000 US psychiatrists is stable, affluent and attractive for advertisers.
Andy Black, Mar 19, 2007 5:26:06 AM
What's with the combination? would it really help a lot to us? maybe we just choose the one which ease us from searching the web, i guess.....
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cirilyn_20
Technology supplier search engine Conjungo has been launched to help ease search times for companies looking for suppliers of technologies. Conjungo is the only place online where technology vendors can list their entire channel in an easily searchable format. This helps buyers find local or specialist resellers. http://www.conjungo.com
cirilyn, Apr 11, 2008 5:32:31 PM
Hi, I've just finished my new vertical job search engine JobGeni http://www.jobgeni.com that runs on Google AJAX Feed API. It's pulls the data from several major jobsites like indeed, simplyhired, yahoo hotjobs, monster and jobster.
Vidal, Apr 15, 2008 2:07:48 PM
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