Is Focusing on One Search Vertical Better than Focusing on Many?

Search is becoming much more vertical. Search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN do a horrendous job in vertical search. We are seeing many more vertical search engines hit the market. Sites like indeed.com, simplyhired.com, trulia.com, roost.com, rentbits.com and others. All of these sites are focusing on one thing and trying to do it very well.

Indeed and SimplyHired focus on job search, Trulia and Roost focus on For Sale properties, rentBits focuses on rentals. Is it true that focusing on one thing may be better than focusing on many things at once?

One day at Google, along time ago, CEO, Eric Schmidt asked the Google employees how many Yahoo products they use? Many people raised their hand and said Yahoo stocks, Yahoo mail, Yahoo IM and Yahoo news. These were the top 4 products that a majority of the users used. However, at the time Yahoo had over 100 products they offered. Google decided to take a laser focused approach and instead of focusing on many products they focused on a few. Needless to say, Google has become the market leader in Google Stocks, Google Mail, Google IM, Google News and of course Google search..

Last year, an email from a Yahoo executive was leaked.

“I’ve heard our strategy described as spreading peanut butter across the myriad opportunities that continue to evolve in the online world. The result: a thin layer of investment spread across everything we do and thus we focus on nothing in particular. I hate peanut butter. We all should.”

Do you like peanut butter? I know it spreads nicely but the negative is it sticks to the roof of your mouth? Trying to be everything to everyone usually does not work. Just ask Yahoo.

Oodle.com is an incredibly great and successful classifieds search engine that crawls the web actively looking for classifieds across a variety of verticals. Verticals like cars, real estate, rentals, jobs, pets, items for sale, tickets, personals and other services. But the question is posed, Is Focusing on One Search Vertical Better than Focusing on Many?

Lets take a look at traffic from vertical search engines and compare them to broader vertical search engines (oodle and vast).

SimplyHired VS Oodle

Simplyhired Date Founded - 2003
Oodle Date Founded - 2004
SimplyHired Total Funding - $16.5 Million
Oodle Total Funding - $16 Million

Traffic (compete.com)

SimplyHired Total Uniques (April) - 4,761,064
Oodle Total Uniques (April)- 1,716,876

Indeed Vs Vast

Indeed Date Founded - 2004
Vast Date Founded - 2005

Indeed Total Funding - $5 Million
Vast Total Funding - Series A, 4/05
Clearstone Venture Partners
Leapfrog Ventures

Traffic (compete.com)

Indeed Total Uniques (April) - 5,875,717
Vast Total Uniques (April)- 474,279

Below is a graph conmparing the two broad classified search engines (oodle and Vast) and focused vertical search engines, simplyhired, trulia and indeed.

In all cases, the vertical search engines focusing on one thing have more traffic than the two classifieds search engines concentrating on many things.

Why does focusing on one thing actually drive more traffic? Here are some thoughts:

1) Easier to focus SEO efforts on one thing.
2) Greater ability to crawl many more related vertical sites when focusing on one industry.
3) Able to provide more vertical enhancement and features.
4) Greater ability to increase market share through brand recognition and partnership opportunities.
5) Greater ability to focus sales efforts on specific advertisers.
6) Greater ability to partner and share revenue with larger portals. i.e myspace, msn, aol, etc.
7) Greater ability to penetrate deeper into local and subvertical sites. i.e (section 8 housing, corporate housing, and other specialty searches)
8) Greater ability to enhance search experience through tools like vertically focused QandA, Trends, etc

Can you think of any more?

I think many of the classifieds aggregators will see great success. However, I think those focusing on one thing, will have an opportunity to see extraordinary results.