What Is A Vertical Search Engine?

Date First Published: 6th February 2023

Topic: Web Design & Development

Subtopic: Web Services

Article Type: Computer Terms & Definitions

Difficulty Level: 5/10

Learn more about what a vertical search engine is in this article.

A vertical search engine, also known as a topical search engine, or a speciality search engine, is one that only focuses on a specific type of content, such as an industry, online shopping, images, legal information, medical information, travel, or scholarly literature. It is different from a general web search engine which focuses on all types of online content and indexes large portions of the World Wide Web using a general web crawler. Vertical search engines often use a focused crawler, which will only index webpages relevant to a specific topic or a set of topics.

Advantages Of Vertical Search Engines

Vertical search engines come with some advantages, including:

• More targeted search results. Since they only focus on a specific type of content, more targeted results can be provided by vertical search engines. This will improve the relevancy of all the returned results.
• Faster and more efficient. Vertical search engines only allow users to search for specific types of content, improving the speed and efficiency of the search process. This will also save users browsing through irrelevant topics whilst looking through results.
• Improved user experience. Unlike standard horizontal search engines, such as Google, which will return results that are too broad, meaning that not all the information provided is likely to be relevant to a search query, horizontal search engines are suitable for unique user needs. When search results are too broad, users can get overwhelmed by the large number of results when they look for specific information.
• Less competition to a highly targeted audience. Due to less competition, it will be easier for new sites to rank and not get lost in the search results. This will also speed up the process of users finding the information that they are looking for, unlike horizontal search engines, which provide a bit of everything in the search results and face a lot of competition. New sites will really struggle to rank for competitive keywords in the general Google search results, especially when they are competing with high-authority sites that have been up for decades.

Examples Of Vertical Search Engines

It is not possible to cover every vertical search engine here, but some examples of major vertical search engines are:

• YouTube - A video-sharing site owned by Google with a search feature that only focuses on video content.
• Amazon - An ecommerce site with a search feature that only focuses on products listed on its platform.
• Google Images - One of Google’s search engines that only focuses on images.
• Yelp - An online directory and review site that provides a local search feature for finding businesses.
• Skyscanner - A travel search engine for flights and hotels anywhere in the world.

Google’s default search is a good example of a horizontal search engine. This is because it horizontally searches the World Wide Web and covers a massive amount of topics and formats. However, Google does have more specific vertical search functions, such as Maps, Images, Flights, News, and Books.

On-site search is a good example of a vertical search engine as the search is limited to a single domain name and does not return results from outside that domain name. This site uses an on-site search feature in the sidebar (if browsing on a larger device) or near the bottom of the page (if browsing on a smaller device).