Feedgrowth

Who goes there? Target buyers with vertical search tools like Roost

Posted by tom klein January 28, 2008 at 2:30 am

While most people start the buying process with Google or Yahoo!, these tools aren’t the right ones to use for many categories of things. Accordingly, they’re not always the right place to put your advertising, either.

Take homebuyers for example. When it comes to targeting them, you’re better off advertising with Roost. This real-estate search engine provides comprehensive listings (not yet nationally), including for-sale-by-owner listings. Search results feature photos, mapping, and summary information. In addition, users can adjust results using sliders, a handy tool for narrowing results by price, location, or even year built.

Roost makes money by hosting a directory of real-estate broker sites and delivering traffic to them. One thing for sure, Roost search users are definitely interested buyers. When it comes to going to the next level of search advertising, have you explored what vertical search tools exist for your industry?

Vertical search engines represent the real competition for Google and its ilk. Or, maybe just acquisition targets. No one knows what to do with 10,000 search results. These vertical tools get you just the information you want.

The question to consider for a vertical search tool - are there enough users to make advertising or a relationship interesting. Because Roost is a startup and not yet a national site, it won’t have many users. Still, you don’t have to sell too many houses to make some kind of advertising worthwhile.

Search 2.0 – What Next? Specialty search engines

comments

no comment