Vertical is Better

It's always been relevancy that drives the efficacy of search - that's a no-brainer, and the reason Google is king of general search. But because that search is general, riffraff makes its way into the results, sometimes old riffraff, which is the very foundation for the rise of vertical, or niche, search engines.

Take, for example, a Google search for [brittle bone disease]. Google does a nice job of bringing up alternative and supplemental results, and the first few results are quite relevant.

But note also a BBC article link from 2004, a badge of slightly dated information, which isn't exactly what a medical researcher wants.

It's a minor issue, but it demonstrates that there is room to improve both in timeliness and category. We've also learned recently that three-quarters of American Internet users (100 million adults) inherently trust the source they've found online, without taking the time to vet the information.

Do another search for [brittle bone disease] at Healthline.com. Like Google, except with more emphasis, Healthline provides the medical terminology Osteogenesis Imperfecta via its "Medically Speaking" function. Additionally, below that are four links to articles from content Healthline has licensed from leading medical publishers such as Thomson Gale and ADAM.