Media Post has a short article today about Forbes.com users now having access to search vertical IT.com directly from search boxes located on the Forbes site.
IT.com uses a targeted crawler to build a database focusing only on information technology solutions for the enterprise.
Although placing search boxes to specialty/vertical databases on non-search sites like Forbes is not a new concept, it’s still a good one since it can help get the word out about these types of search tools.
In an email to me, Mark Conover the IT.com CEOwrote:
The top priority [for IT.com] is to provide the most relevant results for PARTICULAR audience being served.
He added:
It just so happens that the algorithm is “ungamable”.
As I touched on earlier this week, just because content can be crawled and searched doesn’t mean the searcher will see it. Use of a vertical/focused database can often help the user get the most relevant results in the shortest amount of time. Said in different words, the biggest database (in terms of overall size) doesn’t mean it’s the best database for every search. Conover is also correct in pointing out that verticals can also offer quality results by focusing on the needs of a specific user group.
With the increasing interest in verticals, I think more and more people are realizing that specialty engines are valuable and useful resources.
Related reading
12 companies hit with a Google manual penalty
Just in case you're ever tempted to try a few black-hat practices to manipulate your search positions in Google, here are 12 tales to persuade you otherwise.
Google AMP is coming to organic search results – Update!
Six months ago, Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages initiative was only available in the ‘Top Stories’ carousel of it search results. Now Google has announced that AMP support will be rolled out across the entire organic search results page.
Yelp vs. Google vs. Facebook Reviews: which should you focus on and why?
If you are handling the marketing for a small business, it can be a challenge to decide where review efforts should be spent.
Guide to Google ranking signals – Part 3: quality content
An algorithm won't judge for personal taste, but there are some technical things you can do to make sure your content is deemed 'quality', not just to spider crawlers but also real human readers too.
