The potential for vertical search in Asia

Vertical search has become an important tool in many parts of the globe, but the jury is still out on whether it is right for Asia. Mike Hoare reports

As long as there has been the internet, there has been search. For a few mathematically inclined geniuses, that has translated into pots of cash for taking Google from a search engine that gave meaningful results into a multi-headed, many-income-streamed megacorp.

The Big G has come to define search, particularly what has become known as horizontal or universal search: the idea that taking a little bit from a lot of sources will basically please most consumers, most of the time.

This scattergun approach works well but there is also a need for more focused search tools that look specifically at a single area.

“In my view, the growth in vertical search is led by the natural need for specific results which arise either from demographic needs, geographic needs, a specific interest area or even a specific kind of application,” says Vijay Singh, the managing director of India’s 141Sercon.

This simple proposition becomes a little more confusing, though, when you look at some of the offerings in Asia, says Douglas White, the founder of Prosperity Research, a digital agency that specialises in videobased social media campaigns. With very few “pure play” search engines able to be monetised anywhere in the world, Asian vertical search is more of a hybrid vertical portal, offering industryspecific news and forums to keep consumers coming back. White argues that vertical search is “anything that is doing the first tier of filtering for you”. It is within this second tier of search that vertical online properties are working.

“If it is easy, convenient and saves time, then it will do well. That is why Google became huge”

The argument for vertical search runs something like this: consumers with a specific need are more likely to pull the trigger on a purchase, if you can draw them to a specific, often industry-based, vertical site, there are real opportunities for marketers. And there is also the maxim that while traffic to verticals is a fraction of that drawn to a Yahoo, MSN or Google, the quality of consumers is high and intent to transact is a given. That equates in to new leads.

For marketers, vertical represents opportunities to lower the costs of buying keywords and to create a longer-term presence. From a brand building perspective, since the amount of content referenced in vertical engine is also far less than the volume of pages indexed at anyone of the big three, the odds of having your page ranked more highly than the competition are greater.

The big players have invested billions in perfecting their horizontal search algorithms and built a leadership position they are unlikely to give up anytime soon. To respond to any challenge from vertical search, they have adapted their offerings and are commonly referred to as blended search engines. Search results that include images, video and news reports, for example, integrate the basic elements of a specialised vertical search.

In the face of competition and overwhelmed by big budgets — Microsoft reportedly has an adspend of US$100 million for its new Bing search engine — getting traffic to a specialised vertical is going to be tough. Ironically it is often the quality of information from a vertical that lets consumers down. White points out that, as a subset of paid search, the information to consumers is not as objective as it could be. Where these sites can offer real value to consumers is by saving time, says White. “If it is easy, convenient and saves time, then it will do well. That is why Google became huge,” he says.

For certain industries, vertical works well. Careers, travel and shopping are particularly successful exponents in Asia says Singh. The scores of travel sites, including CTrip and Zuji; JobsDB and Monster in the career category; and the hundreds of consumer electronics shopping sites are evidence of that. In India a fourth big category is matrimonials.

“The idea of search sites which are constrained and restricted to a specific vertical has been around for a while and is now going through a revival of sorts, at least in the developed markets,” says Singh.

In ROI terms, Arjun Ghosh, MediaCom’s Singapore-based director of business science, suggests advertisers need a change in mindset and to not treat search as they would print or TV.

“We have seen that money invested in search for B2B and tech product categories, like phones, computers and cars, gives higher short-term returns versus most mass media investments,” he says, adding that in other product categories the data is still evolving.

Becomingly increasingly focused, however, has its downfalls. Richard Mabey is the managing director at Hong Kongbased digital shop The Egg. The SME-sized firm specialises in SEO or search engine optimisation, the mechanism that boost your offering up an search engine’s results “organically” by selective use of key words.

His shop works closely with manufacturers based in Southern China who export around the world. He has seen a definite swing away from verticals and back toward organic search.

“What we are seeing, with a lot of our customers, is that traditionally they have used [B2B marketplace] Alibaba.com. They are getting clustered together with other manufacturers and are finding it

hard to get any differentiation,” he says, adding that he has seen similar experiences on similar B2B sites operated by mainland Chinese giant Baidu.

“The cost of organic search will beat anything in the long run ”

And while a site like Alibaba may provide volumes of leads, they are going to be customers window-shopping for the best price, not necessarily looking to buy. Mabey argues that a pay-per-click campaign is going to be more expensive than properly optimising your site. “The cost of organic search will beat anything in the long run but it may take a little longer to build your results,” he says.

A clearly defined space in some of the world’s more developed markets, vertical search is a story to watch in Asia. White predicts the turning point will come when engines become more intelligent and are able to recognise the nuances between different users. For now, though, verticals are a potential source of news leads, at a considerable price discount.

“My advice to any marketer would be the same for vertical search as it is for just about anything else: look at what the end objective is. Sometimes it’s about brand building and sometimes it’s about conversions,” says White.