Many vertical search services leave me cold - they're either far too narrow in their content sets or far too broad in their search capabilities. GlobalSpec is a nice example of how vertical search can service a broad array of focused needs within a given community from a common interface. Focused on engineers, the single-box search for GlobalSpec can be tuned to look for products, companies, materials properties, patents, application notes and other key filters that fit in with specific types of needs that engineers have in a product development lifecycle. GlobalSpec provides a hybrid of databased, structured content and outbound links to highly filtered Web sources that seem to match very well to specific queries. For registration you get to drill down into the deepest levels of their database and enter their sales lead generation and newsletter regime, a TechTarget-like model for effective monetization of traffic. With the announcement of access to additional sources from leading SciTech publishers such as John Wiley and Knovel GlobalSpec provides even more layers to its open aggregation model to add value to its one-stop engineering content shop. It's not the most attractive or well-designed site but hey, we're dealing with engineers here: homely and functional kind of works for this crowd in many ways. If you're thinking of what a good vertical search tool and business model would look like in your sector, GlobalSpec should be on your short list of visits for some good hints.