Vertical Search

Philip James, CEO, Snooth

What changed?

•Web got big• Search engines index small portion• % indexed shrinking

• Poor results for focused searches• Endless tweaking of search terms

•Need for specialized search• Videos, jobs, medical data, blogs etc

Its easy, when you are niche!

•Smaller = higher relevancy•Return essential content only

• Balance specialization vs market size

• Dominate your space• Room for 1 to 3 players each

Getting the word out

•From a search engine!• SEO – if you have the content• SEM – if you have a fast conversion cycle

•Or• SMM – depending on the business

•How scalable are these?

Delivering better search

• New content search – eg. blogs, images, videos

• “Canned Search” – eg. Dog friendly employers

• Parametric Search – more like DB queries

• Semantic Search – implied meaning

• Filters and relevant post search tools

Killer combo: parametric / semantic

• No need to ‘discover’ intent, its already clear

• Parametrics and Semantics in action• “Spicy cali cab that’s good with beef”• Where zip = 10003

Filters and post search

• Search refinement•Price sliders•Buttons•Dropdowns •Tags

•Search ‘within’ results

You still need a biz model…

•Advertising - sponsored listings, banner ads• At $50 eCPM need 80 million pageviews /

month to make $50m annually

•Referrals / lead generation (clicks or sale)• At 10% per sale affiliate fees, need to refer

$500 million in sales. If $100 per transaction then generate 14,000 transactions daily

And so…

•Pick your vertical carefully• Weigh up market size / competition• Scalable acquisition of users

•Provide a clear search benefit

•Ensure pageview volume or lead gen potential

Vertical Search

Philip James, CEO, Snooth