Specialized Search Engines: Finding the Right Niche
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Call them vertical, or niche, or even “Google killers.” But whatever you call them, there are hundreds of search engines out there other than the Big Three (or Big Five if you count AOL and Ask). In this article I’ll take a look at this wide open field, and discuss why you might want to broaden your searching (and perhaps advertising) horizons past Google.
I’ve regularly reviewed alternative search engines here on SEO Chat. I consider it one of the perks of this job, because every time you review a new search engine, you’re looking at a different perspective on what is important and how to sort the Internet. Often the creators of these new search engines consciously take an approach that is different from Google’s. “Different” doesn’t necessarily mean “better overall,” but it can mean “better for certain situations.”
To coin an analogy, think of Google as the biggest department store in the world (I know, that’s either Wal-Mart or Amazon, but bear with me). For most of your needs, you’ll probably be able to find the right item at that department store. But say your portly Aunt Edna just fell and did something nasty to her knee, for which she now needs a custom-built brace. You wouldn’t go to the department store for that; you’d go to a hospital, which would be able to refer to you to the right place to have that made.
By the same token, if you’re looking for the most up-to-date medical information on a particular condition, you might go to Google if it’s a well-known and much-discussed condition such as breast cancer, but not if it’s something that’s more rare and unusual. For that, you’d be wise to consider some of the vertical search engines that explicitly cover the health and medical field. I’ve reviewed several of those for SEO Chat.
The general point is that it is good to have options. You can try to be all things to all people, but if you do, it’s almost inevitable that you will fall short in some areas. That’s where alternative search engines come in. In the rest of this article, I’m going to look at ways you can find out about the alternative search engines, what kinds of things they cover, and why you might want to check them out -- not just as a searcher, but as someone who wants to get your web sites in front of people.
Next: Finding Your Alternatives >>
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