Vertical Search - I still don't get it!

The idea of vertical search is not new. For those who have never heard of it here's the wikipedia definition.

For those who have heard of it, you'll know that the hype has been around for a while. Om Malik wrote an article about it in March of 2005 - almost 2 years ago. That's an absolute eternity in terms of the new web app world but a quick search will find a plethora of reputable sources still claiming it to be a Google-killer and the next "biggest thing ever in the history of mankind".

Now, don't get me wrong, I get the concept - after all, more targeted search results is something that everyone would probably be interested in. That's not my issue.

What I don't get is why it is being touted as revolutionary.

If vertical search becomes popular, this is what I believe will happen: -

1. So many entrants will flood the market that search will become hugely fragmented. As a result, people will have to use horizontal search engines, like google, to find possible vertical search engines to use.

2. This will result in new entrants creating search aggregators that allow you to search groups of vertical search engines - essentially creating a kind of personalised search page based on your interests etc.

3. As people start to personalise these aggregators they will add more and more vertical search engines. To understand why this would happen think of how many different things you have searched for recently and how many different vertical search engines you would have to include on your "personal page" to cover them all. The alternative would be to just pick and choose particular search engines for each different search, but honestly, who could be bothered except in the rarest of cases?

The end result is that, while sometimes producing less relevant results, horizontal search engines will remain the easiest way to find stuff. From my experience, human nature dictates that people will gravitate towards that rather than seeking the diminishing returns associated with the effort needed to get more and more specific search results out of the many decentralised vertical search engines.

There are also some arguments that vertical search is better for advertisers, but last time I checked, advertisers went to where the people are, not the other way round. The whole "advertiser-preferred" vertical search concept is predicated on the notion that people will change their current behaviour and overcome the inertia of familiarity for an arguably better solution. If i was in the search or advertising game, that's not something I would be betting the farm on.

Also, vertical search advocates seem to conveniently forget the fact that the current horizontal search engines will not simply lay down and die in the face of competition. As an example, technorati has been super-successful in the blog search category, so what did google do? Introduced Google Blog Search. The idea of a popular horizontal search engine that can be made more vertical-like when required seems like a far simpler solution for the average user than the fragmented vertical search model.

If/when a google killer does appear it will be based on a new type of search paradigm, something as revolutionary, and maybe as simple, as page rank but not on a collection of niche players.

Time will tell if I've gotten it completely wrong, but i suspect the chances are greater that 2 further years down the track people will still be talking about the potential of vertical search rather than using vertical search engines as their main source of information