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The Internet is an ever-evolving medium created out of the need for instantaneous information transfer. The Internet continues to grow at a rate of 7 million pages per day, and is currently home to 2.1 billion documents, according to Cyveillance.

As a general entity, the Internet is constantly struggling to find a way to distribute and categorize the vast stores of global data in a way that satisfies the hunger for information relevant to the user's needs.

Users are becoming overwhelmed with all the information - online traffic is now choosing sides between a few broad-based portals and thousands of vertical sites.

Going Vertical

There is a growing trend in the online world to go vertical. The days of the mega-portals are gone. The new term for destination sites is "vortal", meaning vertical portal.

More and more retailers are seeking diversity in advertising dollars by shifting to vertical markets, citing greater efficiency in delivering qualified leads and customers and lower acquisition costs, according to Forrester Research. They project that fifty-seven percent of all online advertisement spending will flow from portal deals to vertical sites and affiliate networks by 2004.

As the Internet continues to grow, more users trust vertical Web sites to provide the information and products they are looking for instead of a generic portal or a generic search engine.

The initial thrill of using the now cumbersome generic search engines services is waning. Users are frustrated when a search at Google for "drivers" results in 9 million results. The day is dawning when that user will visit golf.com to find the drivers they were looking for at the click of a search button.

Is your site vertical? Find out here.