Ecommerce: the advantages of using Vertical and Niche Search Engines

[mandy]

The more niched the vertical product search engines are, the less traffic they get. But how much does that matter if the traffic they do get is extremely interested in buying what the vertical engines help find?...

Vertical engines also claim to deliver more high quality traffic. Greitzer compares the quality of traffic delivered to a retailer from a first tier shopping engine such as Shopzilla to that which a merchant would get from a major general search engine. “Where it starts to get interesting is if you really dive deep,” he says. “The microniched verticals are a really appealing category. I don’t think it has scale yet, but it’s one that’s interesting to watch. Some search engines we see really try to narrow the content. The people searching on Zafu.com, for instance, are more qualified as jeans buyers than the people searching for jeans on a general engine.”

Besides narrowing content, vertical engines also attract shoppers and facilitate purchases with added services to make choice even easier within their given niche. Zafu.com’s jeans finder feature asks searchers questions about their body type and preferences regarding fit and sizing...

full article: http://www.internetretailer.com/article.asp?id=22585