Healthy Future for Vertical Search Engines?
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One observer commenting on what could be gleaned from AOL’s privacy-exploding release of search data noted that there seems to be a need for at least three kinds of vertical search engines: one covering religion, one for porn (of course) and one concerned with health. While I can’t speak for the first two, the niche market represented by the last of the three has a thriving future, judging from how many rivals have entered that space. This two-part series take a look at how both the major search engines and the specialized ones are addressing that need.
Inevitably when the topic turns to specialized search engines, one has to ask if we really need them. After all, Google, Yahoo, and others do a pretty good job of delivering relevant search results, and they’re getting better all the time, right? That turns out to be only partially right – and for certain subject matter, it can be (almost literally) dead wrong.
Let’s look at the broad example of questions related to health. General search engines try to go for breadth as opposed to depth. Because of this, your results might not be as reliable or specialized as you might like. This is particularly true of the sponsored links for a search on something like “weight loss.” How do you know what to believe?
Beyond that point, everyone has their own medical history, and the answers to many questions that one might search for online may be very different based on factors such as age, sex, family history, etc. With doctors becoming more difficult to afford and consumers paying more of the burden for their own health care, many people are spending more time searching for health information before ever seeing someone with a stethoscope. That trend looks set to continue especially as the general population grows proportionately older (20 percent of the U.S. population will be over the age of 65 by 2030, according to the Department of Health and Human Services). An older population means more people suffering from chronic illnesses – and more people needing health information at their fingertips.
Can we trust general search engines to deliver that information? A Jupiter Research report from January of this year noted that nearly half of online consumers search for health information at least once a month – but only 16 percent of these searchers found what they were looking for. It seems as if there is significant room for improvement.
Next: Healthy Rivals >>
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