The Verticalization of Local Search III
Following up on last week’s post, here is an in-depth Search Engine Watch article that echoes some of the benefits of vertical search. Search Engine Land meanwhile profiles online travel site SideStep, which puts some of these benefits into action.
The one-stop-shop approach to provide everything consumers need within a particular vertical is what SideStep has done to get users to sidestep (pun intended) Google and Yahoo! as a first step in online travel research. Travel is the vertical often cited as experiencing the most online growth and disintermediation of its offline counterparts (i.e., travel agents). Real estate is not far behind.
