Greg Sterling has a post on Search Engine Journal about vertical vs. horizontal search that is well worth reading. He makes a great point about the challenges facing vertical search and whether they will really win the consumer adoption battle.

From the post:

“Rather I‚Äôm interested in how that richness or improvement is effectively conveyed to consumers. Will people get it and will they change their behavior accordingly ‚Äî meaning switch to the vertical engine? Or, is everyone doomed to perpetually play the SEM traffic arbitrage and/or SEO game?

People say to me that a better experience will be self-evident and that will motivate the change in usage. I‚Äôm not so sure. It‚Äôs really an empirical question that has yet to fully play out.”

This is a really important point. Changing consumer behavior is really hard and takes a long time. The key challenge facing vertical search (even after getting the technology/data aggregation correct) is convincing consumers to go somewhere other than Google to search for what they are looking for.

It has worked in certain segments – travel, jobs – but in general, it’s a tough slog. “Build it and they will come” is probably not going to be productive.