Let’s face it, when I query the term “wholesale” on Google and find 232,000,000 matching results, I almost cringe at attempting to locate a result that would possess any relevancy to what I am looking for. The Tier 1’s ( yahoo, google, msn) are getting too big, to fast. Google has over 100,000 advertisers. Now, you be the judge in this scenario of what makes more sense:
1) You are small importer of a hot new remote control car.
2) You would like to fund a ppc account and do some paid search.
3) Ok..You go to google and set a budget of $25 a day on the keyword “wholesale remote control cars”.

Bingo…Now you’re ready to get some killer response because we all now that there can’t be too many wholesale companies out there buying the search term “wholesale remote control cars”.

Errrrr…..Wrong! As a matter of fact, I just counted over 78 advertisers purchasing that terms. Companies like: Yahoo, Ebay and Autosite are all purchasing that term. How in the world do you plan on competing with multi billion dollar companies? Better yet, why in bloody heck is Google letting companies that have nothing to do with that search term, purchase keywords that have absolutely no relevancy to their business? Here is your answer: Google does the best they can to monitor and approve ads. However, there is no way possible to monitor everything out there. The very fact that companies like Yahoo, Ford, UPS, Salesforce, or Ebay can purchase any keyowrd they want to ( just for the sake of traffic) should raise the eyeballs of every marketer on Madison Avenue. Your budget of $25 a day will never, ever, ever let you compete, or be on the top of a sponsored search result when forced to compete against those with budgets of 1,000,000 a day. Yes folks, that $1 MILLION DOLLARS a day.

Vertical Search attempts to solve that problem. Vertical engines place a high level of integrity on their search results and tend to focus on 1 or 2 specific market niches. Take a look at Toptenwholesale or even Buisness.com. Toptenwholesale is B2B only search engine where only true wholesale companies can advertise. Users, or retailers, that come to the site expect to find true wholesale sources when they come to Toptenwholesale looking for wholesale products. If one were to go Google, and do a search for wholesale electronics, they would find companies like Best Buy and Circuit City on top the paid search results. We all know that those two companies are retail stores, not wholesalers! So, in effect, those paid search results being brought to you by Google really stink. Now, go to Toptenwholesale, and do a search for wholesale electronics, and tell me what you find. Companies like: Jacob’s Trading, Via Trading and Big Deals Outlet. These are true wholesale companies who have exclusive agreements with major brand names or big box retailers on true wholesale goods such as : tv’s, dvd players and ipod’s.
Vertical search is not the reinvention of the wheel. It’s the fine tuning of the great work that Google and others have done to pioneer search. There are 1000’s of industries and professions throughout the world. Through pure capitalism, on vertical engines, the best of the breed in any industry will fight to be on top offering searchers are highly relevant result to what they are searching for. Advertisers are also willing to pay much more for qualified leads. Though a vertical search engine will never get the kind of traffic that is generated by a 1000 pound gorilla like Google or Yahoo, the type of traffic that goes to sites like Toptenwholesale, Business.com, Searchenginestratedgies.com or Webdeveloper.com are very savvy users who marketers pay very close attention to.
As an industry professional, and advanced web surfer, I can assure you that I tend to turn to industry specific sites and search engines before I try Google or Yahoo. I just know that I’ll find a better search result, and the last thing I want to do is sort through 232,000,000 results. Hopefully they’ll start listening soon.

Jason-