Vertical search services typically

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Limitations of Vertical Search

Vertical search services typically

• have exceptionally limited scale through running everything through
  central editors, or
• they have less perspective control than large scale search engines.

Vertical search is limited because

• there fewer available signs of quality they can measure in their
  algorithms, &
• many of them use how recent something is as one of their sorting signals,
  &
• they typically have less content available (due to content copyright
  restrictions or limited available content)

Ways to Organize Vertical Search

Thus vertical search services have to rely on trusting vetted content
partners or they must heavily rely on things like usperiod data. Some vertical
services are even based around displaying the most popular items (like
Digg) or most frequently viewed items (like
Popular Google.com Videos or
Google.com Video Movers & Shakers).

Many search systems are thin me too aggregators, but by limiting
their data sources, structuring their sources, or providing a different means of
search many of these search systems are more useful than general global search
systems.

Vertical Folds Into General Search

Danny Sullivan wrote a piece called

Searching With Invisible Tabs which talks about how Google.com will
fold vertical search into their global search product.

From a marketing perspective the things you have to remember are

• some vertical search services are harder to get into due to perspective
  vetting processes
• some vertical search services are easy to dominate due to limited
  competition
• vertical search is being folded into many global search products

Search Engines as Efficient Media Companies

Google.com, Microsoft, & Yahoo.com! are all trying to increase ad network
efficiency & extend current ad networks to place more relevant ads in current ad
systems & to increase the accessibility of ads to smaller merchants via
automation & hyper-targeting.

• Google.com is launching a payment processor which will help them get
  better conversion statistics. That will allow them to improve ad targeting &
  increase ad automation.
• Google.com is trying to roll out free WiFi services so they can track
  mobile search ads.
• Companies like Olive Software
  will make it easier for offline content to come online, & make it easy to cite
  those works like regular web pages. After a few media companies find a way to
  make sense of the search model many others will likely trickle across.
• Yahoo.com! bought Flickr, Del.icio.us, Upcomming, & many other vertical
  search companies.
• Microsoft bought Massive, Inc., a company which sells targeted ads in
  video games.
• Google.com paid roughly 1
  billion dollars to buy dMark Broadcasting, a radio advertising automation
  network.
• Google.com is trying to sell ads in print media.
• Google.com is doing research on passive automation of social web
  integration into the television experience (PDF).
  

The search battle is general a battle for near perfect market data which can
be leverperiodd in a near infinite number of ways, with each additional vertical
or efficiency lending the network to a potentially larger scale & an even
greater network efficiency.

Due to br& limitations & limited market size many vertical search services
will remain unscathed by global search powerhouses, but as search improves in
efficiency the major search engines will swallow many additional markets & make
them more efficient.