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Has The Fuse Been Lit For A Vertical And Social Search Explosion? 
By Bill Sebald (c) 2008 

"The search landscape is evolving" - sure, we hear that everyday
in this industry, but when you log on to Google
(http://www.google.com/), it's hard to drink the Kool-Aid. I
have to admit, I think I'm finally starting to feel the "hype"
thanks to some inspiriting things from the Yahoo camp. When
Yahoo said they were going to "Open Up", I didn't think they'd
kick the barn doors open this wide, this fast. This is exciting.

On the heels of SearchMonkey (http://developer.yahoo.com/
searchmonkey/), Yahoo recently announced BOSS
(http://developer.yahoo.com/search/boss/), another component of
their "Y!OS", or Yahoo Open Strategy. I think vertical / social
engines are finally going to get their 15 minutes, and I couldn't
be happier.

From Yahoo: BOSS (Build your Own Search Service) is Yahoo!'s
open search web services platform. The goal of BOSS is simple:
to foster innovation in the search industry. Developers,
start-ups, and large Internet companies can use BOSS to build
and launch web-scale search products that utilize the entire
Yahoo! Search (http://search.yahoo.com/) index. BOSS gives you
access to Yahoo!'s investments in crawling and indexing, ranking
and relevancy algorithms, and powerful infrastructure. By
combining your unique assets and ideas with our search technology
assets, BOSS is a platform for the next generation of search
innovation, serving hundreds of millions of users across the Web.

BOSS is an effort to update the model, and develop a stronger
footing in search. If you think about it, search engine progress
has been slow lately, especially compared to the evolution of the
rest of the web. The best way to make fast, impactful headway is
to peel away from horizontal search, and test out new Web 2.0
breeds of vertical search products.

Traditionally, there have been heavy risks and costs associated
with this kind of venture. With BOSS, hopefully the tides can
turn, and a plethora of attempts that weren't previously possible
based on these concerns, may suddenly ascend. Sure, there will
be casualties, but it's much less likely to be Yahoo if they're
the backbone to all these ventures. Yahoo is probably thinking,
"If we can't beat them, we can be their engine."

With social computing slated to reach everything from cell phone
platforms, webmail accounts, video game consoles, and desktop
applications, it's logical that it will hit search in a big way.
The ball is rolling – the new engine Me.dium is a social search
engine running off BOSS, and is ultimately supposed to be a
crowd-controlled engine.

Does that mean the noble intention of a human-maintained engine
like Mahalo can be improved with social search? I would think so.
I'm already pretty happy with the vertical search in my favorite
social networks – I'm finding myself checking properties like
Answers.com (http://answers.com/), LinkedIn
(http://www.linkedin.com/), Technorati (http://www.technorati.com/),
StumbleUpon (http://www.stumbleupon.com/), and Mixx before
hitting Google when I know the kind of results I'm looking for
(which is most the time).

If there's one truism about the web, it's that things move
incredibly fast. A site like eBay (http://www.ebay.com/) was
nothing as a start-up in 1995, and a household name in 1998 – in
web years, that's incredibly fast, especially considering that
was more than 10 years ago. The novelty of bidding, and the
value of discounts, feedback, and communication ultimately made
the spirit of purchasing online seem less like a fad. Granted,
there was still a lot of fear about fraud and security then, but
once those safety concerns started to quell (mainly in part to
eBay's efforts, Paypal (http://www.paypal.com/), and users' word
of mouth), millions of people were at least semi-consciously
accepting online ecommerce across the board.

All ecommerce, from Amazon to shopping verticals/ engines, were
benefactors from this new phenomenon. The web is always accepting
of the next big cultural influencer, and is usually poked by the
last big sensation - in this case (as of 2008), social networks.
History suggests it is going to happen fast, and sudden. In
today's web-world, a 10 year span is a 1-2 year span; or, a
blink of an eye to a busy human-being.

So what if horizontal search continues to fall behind, and
vertical / social hybrids become household names? What does this
mean for search marketing? Well, it certainly suggests marketers
will have to be on their toes, but this should still offer many
new branding and ROI opportunities if leveraged correctly. It
will most certainly lead to a higher likelihood of targeted,
converting traffic. That's a huge benefit. Your pre-qualified
visitors will be even more qualified. SEO 2.0 will likely become
the norm, and leave the beta stage it's in now.

The idea of marrying SEO and communities may seem difficult, but
it simply requires more marketing and visitor understanding than
traditional SEO provides. SEO will simply have to morph in
tandem with the search engines, and leave behind some of the
general exposure tactics. Not only will a vertical and social
affect the actions of your users, but it will likely start to
play a more important role to your CPC quality scores, too, as
visitors will start to become accustomed to improved results and
search experience.

Some research firms think vertical search might draw a billion
dollars in revenue by the end of 2009; hundreds of new engines
are already popping up without the help of BOSS now, but this
may grow exponentially making these huge profits a real
possibility.

It's an exciting time to be on the web. It will be great to see
what hands the other search properties are holding. In July
Google showed their hand with their testing of social computing
in their platform (http://www.greenlaneseo.com/blog/2008/07/
google-social-interface/). This is just the beginning of
something very, very cool.
================================================================
Bill Sebald is a search marketing consultant and enthusiast. As
a 10 year SEO, Bill writes about SEO 2.0 on his blog
http://www.greenlaneseo.com/blog.
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