May 11th, 2006
Google Co-op Is a Vertical Search Killer
As usual, Google watchers miss the forest for the trees when it comes to Google’s intersection with traditional media. Google announced the launch of Google Co-op, which clearly has one strategic purpose — destroy the opportunity that magazines and other niche media believe they have to compete with Google by creating vertical searches.
Here are some Google watchers commenting on Co-op:
From Search Engine Watch:
This is Google making a giant and somewhat perplexing leap into mass tagging.
(How Co-op works is rather perplexing.)
From
Search Engine Roundtable:
Is it spamable? Ha. Well, lets give you the forum threads on this topic. I would call it more hackable, than spamable…
(Hackability is any interesting question.)
But as to Google’s strategic objective, here’s the forest:
From Marissa Mayer of Google’s search division:
“People can create vertical searches built on Google Co-op technology,” Mayer said. “It provides a deeper search experience inside the main search on specific topics.”
From Magazine Publishers of America’s upcoming event on “Vertical Search-An Opportunity for Media”:
While no one doubts the power of the big search engines, there is increasing frustration about the inexact nature of results they deliver especially for specialist media sites. Enter Vertical Search, which might be better than Google.
See now what Google is really trying to co-op(t)?
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Damn it, that’s really what they’re doing, isn’t it? I’ve had a lot of thoughts about vertical search but haven’t gotten to pursue them, other than to play around with a rollyo music industry thing I put together.
I still think there will be room to operate, depending on how its implemented, but it’s definitely coming before people have had a chance to dig into vertical search beyond a handful of areas.
You’re right about Google’s intention with Co-op but they won’t kill vertical search engines, just compete with them. Different users search differently. Some will use Google Coop but others will prefer the vertical search engine experience. Not all of Google’s recent product launches have killed the competition. The opportunity for specialized search services remains.
One major part of this appears to be them admitting their engine is loaded with spam. For example, with health it’s really hard to find good info sometimes using the standard Google search. Now, you’d be able to just add custom sources etc. so you won’t be looking at spam and adsense traps. That’s all well and good, but Google on its own should be good enough to filter out those kind of sites anyway. This may be an admission that they don’t think that’s possible given the very nature of their algorithms.
â—‡å‚考 ・マイクãƒÂソフトも注目ã®ソーシャル検索を（メディア・パブ） ・How to Use Google Co-op（Google Blogoscoped) ・Google Co-op Is a Vertical Search Killer（Publishing 2.0） ・Google Co-op: Add Your Own Vertical Search To Google（SearchEngineWatch)
[...] Certains (”Google co-op is a vertical search killer”) y voient déjàune stratégie défensive de Google pour contrer les nouvelles tendances qui émergent notamment chez les éditeurs de presse et autres média qui développent des moteurs de recherche verticaux susceptibles un jour de venir jouer sur le terrain de jeux de Google et donc de venir détourner une partie du marché des ressources publicitaires. CQFD [...]
I have been gathering information regarding vertical search the concept is realy fine and I agree with the previous reply about the spam you get if you are searching in a generic search engine.
I personally have not tried google co op yet but will definetly give it a try soon lets see how it goes.