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Is Vertical Search going to overpower Google ?

Well, we all know Google has been dominating search for many years and most probably will continue to do so till social search or some new revolutionary idea gains momentum. Today Google dominance can be attributed to it being the main home ground for consumers who are either looking to buy any products or conducting research or maybe

just find a news portal.

However, only few people are aware that this pattern is very slowly, but gradually changing, Yes its true and Google has recently acknowledged this by mentioning this in their report, this new development can be largely contributed to rise in mobile devise usage.

On smartphones, people skip Google and go directly to apps, like NYTimes or Mashable. Other apps send people information, like weather or flight delays, before they even ask for it. Then there are apps for almost every service you might consume, I know that health and fitness are among the top and there will be many more.

My own search behavior is an example, lets see how it has evolved over the years. If I want to buy an air ticket, I directly visit Cleartrip.com and to compare I visit a Makemytrip or Ixigo, for buying books I know there’s nothing that beats Amazon but I also know that there is Flipkart. To get my hands on some cool deals there’s Groupon or Snapdeal.com, etc. Either way, Google has lost a search (which is a customer) isn’t it!

Some research also proves that I’m not alone in this evolution of search behavior. With the boom of some super cool mobile apps, people no longer want to search the web like the index of a book, reading title, description & finally clicking on links on the SERPS of the searched term.

My girlfriend says, I don’t want to see 10 black listings on white screen, I want to know the closest movie hall, make a reservation & be on our way. Ahh, thanks to bookmyshow.com I can do that. In-fact Google local might be headed her way with more customized search results. We all know that search results are different if we are logged into our Google account.

As per comScore, Google searches conducted on mobile device, declined by 3% in the 2nd half of 2012. Meanwhile, vertical search site climbed a whooping 8 %. In fact, The New York Times reported that Amazon (world’s largest online retailer) maintains a larger share of shopping searches than Google does. That’s phenomenal.

Vertical search has been steadily growing for years, the increase in Web addresses ( 30 trillion & counting ) and the rise of mobile technology & cheaper smartphone devices are the key causes of spike in vertical search growth.

Here are various aspects to vertical search and I will be coming back with these soon. Right now it’s the weekend and I got some tickets to book

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