Dave Kellogg, President and CEO of Mark Logic Corporation, lead a panel including Stephen Baker, CEO of Reed Search, Kelly Gay, Chairman, President & CEO of KnowledgeStorm and Brad Mehl, VP of Marketing at ThomasNet. ReedSearch provides a broad platform that can be repurposed, "powered by Zibb" branding in portals. Designed to be a standalone product. KnowledgeStorm provides technology information, all content that's paid for, organized via search, think repository of technology solutions, driven by internal search engine. Driven by lead generation. True vertical searches as well. ThomasNet is now all of Thomas' publishing, all to the Web, was all ad-supported, but now a complete suite of solutions.

To Kelly, vertical search is a set of information that solves a problem specific to a domain, be it an industry, a geography. E.g., motocross fans. Vertical search is cross-web, KStorm is within the KStorm domain for search. Stephen, Reed covers all sorts of verticals, it's news, it's market research, trends, purchasing for 26 vertical industries. Goal is to parse entire web as relevant. Help users parse their needs. Designed to help customers of trade magazines to have an extra utility. The technology is commoditized, great search platforms require more. Have to find the extremely focused content, then provide search and discovery tools. Brad: Search is an important part of a destination site, how do you set the world on fire with toilet seat sales for government? ThomasNet supplies unique filtering that goes far beyond what's in the Web content itself to provide effective filtering. Combination of humans and technology: Hand-crafted descriptions and categorization of companies, checking on key elements such as ISO certification, minority contractor status, etc. to correlate with Web content for filtering. "One thing to find the toilet seat, another to understand best practices for that seat," so they include white papers and the ability to connect with professionals.

Kelly: vertical search may lead one to a community, but it is not a community. Stephen: Knowledge workers spend more and more time searching for information, a full day gathering, waste of time. Vertical search is to help increase productivity [COMMENT: When you come right down to it, search is an editorial process. So the question becomes, is it the best way to edit the Web? Look at Google News and it works at a very broad level when you have whole nations or very broad topics that define domains. But for finer topics, or even on many broader topics, it takes editorial intervention. Google's patented link analysis algorithms allow users who provide links to provide an automated level of human editing, but doesn't come close to something like a social bookmarking service or a weblog in some ways.]

Kelly: Most people don't think in terms of Web 2.0 today, can't build a whole product around it, FindTech is growing, but blog traffic are a blip. People want to make it easy for them. Brad: it's all about trust, people trust like-minded colleagues, that needs to be exploited. Dave: Where do you add value? Kelly: you have to add value in a different way than a Google. Looking at Forbes.com, a user can type in a search, get white papers and product information. Surround a user with contextual information may help, they type in their "best guess" and then your own content can add value [COMMENT: using context to place editorial that can improve monetization is key. Few publishers do this effectively yet based on search results, these are leaders]. Brad: provide CAD drawings for clients that get purchased: bring premium to the context. Stephen: Extract entities to help exploration, what's the value to the advertiser, intention-based advertising tools can help to make it a more valuable experience.

Dave: Content in context, something there in the cliche. Good examples, roles, tasks? Brad: task orientation is key, Revolution Health, what do you want to do today. LexisNexis organized in to litigator tasks. Need to begin to build workflow. Stephen: help others to understand what people in their community are looking for via personalization, get into personal workflow environments. Kelly: Subject matter expertise is invaluable in understanding workflow, understanding the role or the function. Brad: look at unsuccessful searches, you can learn a lot that can feed back into Web development. Dave: SF.com knows how to help me when I am looking for leads, etc., to what extent are you going there? [COMMENT: Big pause...this is where these folks need to go in some instances]. Kelly, all companies have different processes, always to be customization, no two look the same. Stephen: Lots of ways to roll out toolkits, still a critical mass, still are a print business, need to raise awareness that the Internet is there, utilities that cater to the audience. Brad: Did thousands of surveys, what are people looking for, made an online catalog business, configure it with the buyers in mind.

Question: Community areas provide 3x page views and repeat visitation as opposed to articles. Brad: just launched forums nine days ago, seems to be similar experience, page views up significantly. Kelly: Community is hugely valuable, vertical search is not just about communities, would be relatively hard to build around initiatives for community-level vertical searches. Stephen: Attention scarcity, seeing dog-walking communities. Using LinkedIn to find people with specific skills in his own company, can't find those filters internally.

Question: How does vertical search change what's offered to advertisers? Brad: ThomasNet provides different drivers for advertisers, tools to convert people into buyers, analytics tools. Kelly: Most vertical search initiatives are goal-oriented, it's about getting something done. Targeting cannot be underestimated.