In the continued evolution of search, more and more verticals are popping up.  The goal for vertical offerings is to focus on one category to provide the most relevant results.  When searching for “Jaguar,” Search Engines return results for the car, the animal, and the Apple operating system.  This leaves the user to filter through off topic choices to find what they want. 

While verticals are still evolving, the travel category is one that has the most developed offering.  Though this is not a comprehensive list, it covers some of the top travel vertical search engines currently in market and discusses some similarities and differences between them.  

Kayak.com – Kayak.com is a meta search engine focused on Flights, Hotels, Cars and Cruises. Text ads, display media and email newsletters are available advertising options.

SideStep.com – SideStep.com is a meta search engine focused on Flights, Hotels, Cars, Vacation Packages, Cruises and Activities. Text ads, display media and email newsletters are available advertising options. SideStep also operates TravelPost.com (www.travelpost.com), a hotel review community, and TripUp.com (www.tripup.com), a community and social travel network.  

Mobissimo – The Mobissimo search engine performs real-time queries of the multiple websites that travelers traditionally check manually (plus dozens of others that are often overlooked). Cars, Hotels, Flights or activity searches are their focus. Mobissimo has a strong international following, which sets them apart from some of the competitors.

Farecast – Farecast combines predictive, statistical and data management algorithms to help searchers decide “when is the best time to buy?” Focus is on Flights currently, but they have a Hotels product currently in Beta. In addition, they have a partnership with MSN Travel that shows Farecast results on the MSN Travel Homepage.  

FareCompare - FareCompare gets the raw fare data from the airlines directly and they process it before it is available on the online travel agencies and in some cases the airline sites themselves. Their goal is to provide information to help in the decision making process before you go directly to the airline site, online travel agency, or other travel search engine to finalize your booking. Focus is on Flights. However, they do have tabs for Hotels, Cars and Cruises – although, these sections of their site are currently powered by Kayak.

Search Engines we know and love are also making appearances in the Travel Search arena - Yahoo! Travel and MSN Travel for example. 

The vertical space will continue to evolve as there are no signs that it is slowing down.  These choices in Travel already provide consumers and marketers with great choices to get what you are looking for.
 

By Michelle Kelly

The Harvard Business Review published a case study in June 2007 titled “We Googled You.” The study discusses whether a company should disqualify a candidate based on Internet results about that person. While Googling a candidate, babysitter, or blind date has been standard practice for many, some are shocked to find what their “online perception” is.

While this (hopefully) is not news to people, there are many professionals who are digitally savvy, but still struggle with how to manage their online reputation. I often discuss with people that they should treat search engine results, as well as assets, as their online resume – it is your chance to tell people about you professionally and personally. The first question I get is “How can I change those results?” The Search Engines are looking for an answer to a question. When someone asks about “Joshua Palau” there are only so many answers out there. The solution to this is to be proactive and provide them with better choices to respond with.

Here are some tips to help you better control your online reputation:

- Purchase your name and pay someone to make your website (if you can’t do it on your own).

o At a bare minimum, load up your bio and resume

o Create a professional and personal section so that you can segment your information

o Add your picture and title the file with your name – presto, you’re now optimized for image search

- Correct any information you control

o Remove or move bad pictures from accounts

o Create separate personalities - if you enjoy reliving the glory days of college that’s great, just consider user a nickname for that account so that it is not associated with your name

- Create professional versions of your social network

o Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, LinkedIn, and any blogs you write and make sure you link them to each other using your name in the hyperlink

o One note on blogs is make sure that you can keep it current – as evidenced by my out of date blog.

- Write something

o You have a job that you’re probably good at. Write about something you know and get published

- Leverage Wikipedia if you can by creating a bio page

o This will be difficult if you have not done something “wiki-worthy”, but it’s worth a shot if you’re important enough

- Have your friends all link to your professional pages

- If you have a common name, consider a PPC campaign – your name should cost you .01 (unless you’re Steve Jobs) and it will allow you to control the top position and the message for very little money

Article by Joshua Palau

So, you want to build a Web site. Where do you start? Do you sit down with your programmers and demand a Web 2.0 site full of techie buzzwords? Or do you turn to your design team for a "visually appealing" Web site that "meets the needs of the business?" William Flaiz discusses the challenge with SEO and User Experience Fusion.

Hey MapQuest, welcome to 3 months ago…time to play catch-up.

Consumers love search. Marketers love search. But how can search help inform marketing decisions.