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ARNOLD
Information
Technology
Vertical Search Engines:
System-Initiated Information Retrieval
Information Today
May 16, 2001
© Stephen E. Arnold, 2001
Arnold Information Technology
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New book The New Trajectories of the Internet, Infonortics, Ltd. May
2001. Portions of this presentation appear in this new monograph.
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Contact:
Stephen Arnold
502-228-1966, voice
502-228-0548, facsimile
[email protected] or
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[email protected]
What We’ll Examine
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Examples
Snapshots of “older” vertical plays
How to think about vertical engines
New approaches
Wrap up
Questions / comments!
Sites with Screenshots
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www.alifemedical.com
www.mercado.com
www.scopeware.com
www.pdamedic.com
Search-and-Retrieval Marketing?
“As long as they’re born faster than
we can make them hate us, we’re in
business.”—New York Times, April 8, 2001
Verticals: A B2B Play
• Create an exchange…chemicals, rubber,
steel
• Move business processes to the Internet
• Chemdex, Vertical Net, and others
• What happened? Massive losses..
Vertical Net Portals
Vertical Net’s Losses Rising
Vertical Net Losses (Mil)
$250.0
$200.0
$150.0
$100.0
$50.0
$0.0
1997
1998
Vertical Net Annual Report, April 2001
1999
2000
As B2B Search Went South
• Big dogs emphasized verticals:
– Verity – Licensing and services
– Autonomy – Classifier and voice
• New players ... a new twist and spin:
– Flurry of activity in medical arena
– Look at search and flip it
– Seek, analyze, display
Following Funds and Opportunity
• A Life Medical
• Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing pushing
the technology…
– Process discharge text
– Identify codes
– Provide point-and-click search, expand, or commit
Case 1: A-Life Medical: Embedded
Query
www.alifemedical.com
Display, Edit, and Commit Codes…
Why A Life Is Important...
• Search-and-retrieval
– Removes the burden on user
– Places information in the work flow
– Access to information when it is needed in the
course of a task
Activity in “Catalog Search”
• Works but users express frustration
• Requires extremely precise queries
• Search engines says they broaden the query,
but they work like Mercado’s…or Easy
Ask…or Bug’s Eye
IntuiFind: Enter Query
www.mercado.com
IntuiFind: Related Videos
Heterogeneous Data
A Connection
Collaboration
Content
Commerce
ROI
• University of Texas (Austin) Center for
Research in Electronic Commerce
• < 15 percent of processes online, no increase
in revenue per employee
• > 35 percent of processes online, “significant
increases in revenue”
• > 40 of customer-related processes had to be
online before significant impact on ROI or
revenue per employee
Center for Research in Electronic Commerce, March 2001
Finding Hot Spots for Fast Cash
Innovation Path
Vertical Search Segment Matrix
Group
Public data
Examples
Google, Alta Vista,
Inktomi
Content Types
Distributed,
Internetaccessible data
Function
Spidering and valueadded segmenting
features
Affiliated firm
data
EasyAsk, Mercado
IntuiFind, Requisite
Tech. BugsEye
Disparate,
distributed data
sources
SQL and legacy
data sources, text,
Web documents
Proprietary / 3rd Sagemaker,
party data
Northern Light,
OpenText, iPhrase,
Verity
Multiserver text
search
Branded content,
Web access,
internal content
indexing, portal
Intranet data
Monomine, Atomz,
Plumtree
Text search
Departmental, SME
indexing and
retrieval
Customer data
SPSS, Brio, NuTech Data mining
Solutions
eCRM,
personalization,
eCommerce
Vertical Access Portals
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Set up fee
License fee
Content fee
Everything Yahoo! does, but internal and
external sources
Vertical Content Characteristics
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Bounded content
Distributed
Heterogeneous file types
Staff created or purchased; therefore,
important
• Work-related; therefore, ROI an issue
• Legacy (old), current (yesterday and today),
and time-sensitive (now)
Verticals a Play
Horizontals and Verticals
Zoom on “Vertical”
Zoom on “Vertical”
A vertical offers a
“search” opportunity
at each intersection
of business function
and industry niche.
Personnel and
banking
Zoom on “Vertical”
Accounting and
banking
Each Silo Contains
Questions …
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One search tool?
Use the search-retrieve-review model?
Learn different systems?
Accept security risks?
Believe marketers’ statements about ROI?
Live with unpredictable software?
Upgrade to obtain acceptable performance?
Live with “just text”?
A wireline connection?
Where We Are
• Search business changing
• Horizontal services — disappointing sales
• Niches — promising...but tricky
– Targeted solutions
– More focused sale
– Experience counted in a segment
New Directions
• Demonstrate return on search investment
• Integrated with work / leisure activities
– Embedded search
– Fits context of the user’s task
– Just-in-time delivery (not push)
• Wireless and wireline
• Partial solutions…suggestive
Mirror World Technologies
www.scopeware.com
Legacy Data
MWT Wireless Support
All-in-One Work / Embedded Search
• PDA Medic
– Emergency medical services
– HotSync
– The price is $5,000 for five
• EMS Manager is a turnkey
personnel tracking software
program.
– Price: $1,000.
Source: Pen Computer Solutions, January 2001
Vertical Search: In Line and On Point
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Where needed
When needed
Wireline
Wireless -- fixed point and mobile
Near real time -- faster is better
Opportunities
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Data mining + traditional search-and-retrieval
Rendering dynamically generated content
Combining information from multiple sources
Maintaining fresh content
Adapting to the user
Near real-time / high speed
Predictive delivery – “just in time” information
or “in line” information
Arnold Information Technology
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Founded in 1991, small team of specialists
Provides technology assessment and information engineering
services
– Planning
– Analysis
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Recent projects:
– Wireless for the world’s largest software company
– University of Michigan next generation network for Kresge Business
School
– Design and planning for U.S. government’s firstgov.gov
– Inventory and analysis of Canadian online initiatives
– Technical and financial analysis of 24 Application Service Providers
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Contact: [email protected]
ARNOLD
Information
Technology
Thank you!
Thank you!