Vertical Search Engines

I always was under assumption that google is the end of search engine and there isn't any need for another search engine. Well, I was wrong. As a matter of fact, google's motto was to organize web to give the users relevant websites for their need. As users are getting more matured online, now its time for the vertical search engines to organize data of a specific domain to find the exact product rather than wandering around all the websites which google lists.

For say, typically, airlines industry went from offline agent booking, to online tickets booking, to online agents like www.orbitz.com, www.cheaptickets.com and had finally landed up on websites like www.kayak.com. Kayak is a search engine for airlines.It gather information from most of the airlines and displays in an organized fashion. User previously had to go to each website of particular airlines to get the pricing/availability to do his comparison, which later was automated by websites like www.orbitz.com by a comparison method. Later, now user had to still compare orbitz and the particular airlines as there is a additional charge in orbitz. kayak has now automated this user action giving him results from both airlines and sites like orbitz. Not to forget www.sidestep.com is another vertical search engine.

The same theory can be applied to indian airlines industry, like www.makemytrip.com, www.yatra.com and then the followon version of kayak are www.ixigo.com ww.bookingbuddy.in.

Similar to the airlines another domain which has similar transformation is Jobs and Staffing. www.indeed.com is a Job Search Engine integrated information of Jobs openings by crawling through the web. Few other websites on similar lines are www.simplyhired.com

I am excited to see how Google will now handle this situation of loosing a huge user base. No doubt in next 1 year every domain will have a specific search engine.