Building a Successful Vertical Search Site

From the Forbes article "One-Stop Search"

Michael Rosenberg, senior vice president of media and marketing services for Autobytel (nasdaq: ABTL) offers his expert opinion on what he thinks a site needs to do to be successful:

--Exhaustive aggregation of all content in that vertical. If it's not exhaustive, it's not fulfilling its promise.

--Ease of use. Isn't that how Google became so popular?

--Unbiased information. A user needs to trust that the search engine is working for them, not a bunch of paying customers.

--Relevant content. The search results need to be pertinent to the search term. If users need to continually refine their search to get what they want, they will abandon the site. "With vertical search, by definition, you need to go to one engine for jobs, another for travel, and another for business supplies," said Rosenberg. "I think the results at these vertical search engines have to be significantly superior to Google and Yahoo! for consumers to overcome that inconvenience."