What Are Specialty Search Engines? Why They Are Important
Specialty search engines provide specific search results based on topic, niche, and industry, with a particular purpose. The search intent is pre-defined in these search engines and they don’t go outside that boundary. They have their own web crawlers, that index web pages relevant to their purpose. These search engines are also called vertical or specialized search engines while generalized search engines like Google are called Horizontal search engines.
We live in a time where access to information is not a problem, but accessing the right information is the real barrier. With billions of data sources around the internet, it’s usually time-consuming to reach deep and dig out the targeted information. Specialty search engines are in demand because of this problem.
Examples Of Specialty Search Engines
Amazon
Amazon is a world-famous e-commerce store with countless products. It’s almost impossible for users to locate and find the desired product if they have to go page after page. That’s why Amazon has incorporated a specialty search engine built to help users find intended products with advanced filters or categories.
You can even filter the search bar, if you are just looking for men’s fashion, select this category, and the keyword you type will be relevant to the exact selection.
Pixabay
The platform with over 5 million+ images, videos, and music. Every query you enter there will give you top-notch pictures, videos, or tunes. There are advanced filters to discover the desired content, like photos, illustrations, or vectors. Or whether you want free or premium content. To maintain the user experience., they have set a high standard for graphics.
Zillow
A real estate marketplace. Users visit here with the intent of buying, renting, or selling homes in the USA. You enter any address, zip code, or city and it will suggest you suitable options.
It also has specialized filters such as bed counts, home type, price, area, or any availability or special features such as basement, single story, on-site parking, etc. It even shows the nearby schools of the targeted building using map features.
LinkedIn is a networking platform for professionals. It’s one of the best platforms to gather all the data about companies and their employees. You can find companies based on their categories. You can find employees based on their location, skills, degree, and profession. You can also find and apply for desired jobs by entering the company name, skills name, or title of the job.
Yelp
Yelp uses the search engine to explore nearby or location-specific businesses. You can see the filter for any type of business such as home services, auto services, restaurants, etc. You can select features like businesses that are currently open or that are verified by Yelp.
Why Speciality Search Engines Exist
By looking at the examples above, you’ll probably say that I can use Google for these purposes as well, so why use those specialty search engines? The reason is that there are many possible intent behind every search.
Generalized search engines aim to provide the results with the dominating search intent while specialty search engines only provide output or web pages with specific search intent. This saves the user from confusion and irrelevant information.
For example, if you enter the keyword dog in Google, you will see various results including pictures of the dogs, information about various dog breeds, evolution of the dogs, pet nutrition, pet products, etc. This is because Google doesn’t understand what you need if you just search for “dog”
But when you enter the same keyword in Amazon, you will only see results related to the products for dogs, such as dog food, dog stands, and dog beds, not about their information or history. Additionally, if you enter the same keyword “dog” in LinkedIn, you will come up with people who are dog trainers, etc.
So if someone is looking for products, he will go to Amazon rather than Google because it exactly matches with users intent and proivdes specialy optimised results. If he is looking for professionals or companies, he will open LinkedIn.
Why You Should Consider It For Your Business?
It is well known that Google is the most used search engine. So focusing on ranking websites or businesses there can get massive traffic. But there are special benefits specialty search engines can deliver that are discussed below:
High Conversion Rate
Specialty search engines won’t give you much traffic as compared to the generalized search engines. But you will get highly targeted traffic that matches exactly with your intent. If the specialty search engine’s purpose is conversion-focused, it means there is a higher chance of getting interested leads and higher conversion since the audience is already using that engine with buying intent.
Less Competition
Ranking or appearing in front of an audience is less competitive in specialty search engines as compared to generalized ones given the fact that general engines have huge indexes of competitors while vertical engine only adds niche-specific business.
Advanced Search Capability
Specialty search engines have advanced search filters that can connect your business to the audience, which generalized engines fail to provide. These filters are highly specific and revolve around the intent such as 2-bedrooms, 3-bedrooms, filter buttons on travel engines like Expedia
Borrowing authority
We just learned that specialty search engines only index businesses if they meet specific criteria. Your business listed there, means you’ve fulfilled those standards. People mostly use these search engines because they trust them. When your business is shown there, you are borrowing the trust and reputation of these reputed vertical search engines.
It is like backlinks, where you get endorsements from other websites that this source (your website) is a credible source for the given information. If you’re unsure about how all these things work, read this SEO guide for small businesses, you’ll get a good idea about backlinks and general SEO.
Common Misconceptions About Speciality Search Engines.
Is Google also a specialty search engine?
Google itself is not a vertical search engine, because it usually gives generalized results, covering multiple intents and niches. But it does have filters to narrow down the search category.
For example, if you are looking for only images, you can open the “images” tab. Or, when looking for products, you can open the “shopping” tab. So we can say it is a horizontal search engine having specialized search features too. But still, it is not as effective as any dedicated specialty search engine.
What’s the difference between specialty search engines and web directories?
Specialty search engines automatically index the web pages or content based on defined rules while owners of the business have to manually submit in the web directories and only after human analysis and approval, are added to the directory.
The search bars on big websites are also specialty search engines?
Yes, they are because when you enter any query in the search bar, you will only get results that are present within the website, which means highly specific searches that won’t go outside the website. Every big website or brand has its own specially designed search engines that are optimised for what they offer.