Wikipedia seen as possible competitor in vertical search
The race for a better search engine was cast in a different light last week, as analyst David Coursey explored the possibilities of "vertical search", and Wikipedia's position in this area could lead to new competition.
In an opinion column last Thursday on eWeek, "Search Engines Succeed at Stoking Frustration", Coursey comments on his increasing difficulties finding useful answers through Google search results. Taking a cue from another reporter's article about vertical search, he suggests, "Sometimes I also think that for common searches I might be better off with a service that actually involves humans in finding answers online, if any of those still exist."
Vertical search is a term used in a recently-released study from JupiterResearch, referring generally to narrower search engines that are focused on specific categories. It relies less on the web crawler approach used by the broad search engines ("horizontal search"), and could offer an alternative to advertisers dealing with the prices of popular keywords at the big search companies. While the concept is not clearly defined, it seems that hyperlinking is one feature that could easily contribute to the "vertical" aspect.
Coursey specifically mentions Wikipedia twice in his analysis, saying that this kind of service "is not too far off the Wikipedia track." Although he doesn't mention the discussions of Google hosting Wikipedia — he might not know about it, or may consider it too speculative to comment on — the negotiations are interesting to consider as a possible alliance between horizontal and vertical search.
In discussing the concept, Coursey considers Wikipedia in tandem with About.com, as if the two would be natural competitors in this field. This view takes the place of the more traditional perspective of Wikipedia as simply an encyclopedia, with the Encyclopædia Britannica as its natural competitor. Worth noting is that while Wikipedia has long ago surpassed Britannica in terms of Alexa traffic rankings, About.com remains ahead of Wikipedia by a decent margin.