A vertical search engine is tailored to a topic-specific market. Their purpose is to target specific areas of technology, manufacturing, retail, construction, government, or education. Vertical markets have a focus such as "golf courses in Las Vegas", instead of just "golf courses" in general. Vertical search engines allow online users a more effective and efficient way to find the information they desire.

For instance, if you live in Las Vegas and want to find local golf courses, a local site featuring a vertical search would deliver a list of area golf courses; it serves up "vertical" results. "Horizontal" results, known to us all as "irrelevant results" would include sites with tee times in Maui and tournaments in Tokyo for the same search query.

How often have you arrived at a site and had difficulty locating what you are looking for? You may have clicked around, drilling down through directories only to spend minutes browsing without reward. Or even more frustrating, is when the site has a search tool and you hungrily type in your desired product, click "find" only to be confronted with completely irrelevant results or the dreaded "no results found". If you're like most, you probably exited the site with a bad impression.

One substantial benefit of vertical search engines is that unlike traditional search engines, users conducting vertical searches avoid irrelevant or unnatural results. This is good news for sites today because the #1 complaint users have of web sites is poorly organized search results. (Vividence ecommerce study, "Tangled Web 2001.)

Why else do traditional search engines fail? Unsuccessful searches. An Infonic study revealed that 74% of test searches were unsuccessful. E-Commerce sites offered the worst relevance among corporate, government and media sites, although public sector sites were the worst overall.

It's not that the products and service we seek at our favorite vertical sites don't exist, it's that the sites' directories and search functions are not able to relevantly display its offerings.

Why does this malady still exist? It seems so simple that if product X is in database Y a search for X will yield X. But this elementary formula does not always play out.

A major reason is that search engines rely on automated intelligence, also known as algorithms, spiders and/or crawlers, to weight Web pages. Crawlers rank relevancy by use of complex algorithms. But, as is being shown by the frustration in the market, no automated intelligence can rank results as well as human intelligence. These algorithms are making critical decisions for businesses. Would you let a computer program decide who's best suited to baby-sit your kids? Or would you want to meet that individual in person? Just because the technology exists doesn't mean that it should be left to its own devices without human intervention.

If the algorithm doesn't understand that a search for "drivers" means that your customers is looking for a golf club and not software, then you've just lost a sale. And even it does understand, what happens when the first result for "drivers" is the worst selling club in your inventory and you want to change the ranking? You might try outsmarting the algorithm to yield a change but there's definitely no guarantee the results will be positioned exactly the way you want.

There's a new generation of search now available - customizable vertical search technology. This is where real control of your site, brand and ability to satisfy and influence users begins.

Custom vertical search technology enables human intervention, when needed, to exert control over search engine characteristics in order to increase effectiveness and enhance the Internet users' experience. You place results exactly where you want under the specific keywords you choose.

It gives you the power to change the first result for "drivers" at anytime just by altering the ranking controls for that page. Your best seller is number one in a matter of seconds. When you run out of an item, you don't have to let "no results found" drive users away. Rather, add a partner or affiliate site into the results that does sell golf clubs. You'll still make money from the sale and your users will be thoroughly impressed that your brand is focused on their satisfaction.

There are many reasons organizations are using customizable vertical search, including:

• satisfied users
• more sales
• better branding
• loyal customers
• increased market share
• stronger partnerships
• better customer relationship management
• more decisive, controlled and profitable sites

The new question is: what would you do with custom vertical search?

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