...So Publishers Should Prepare to Partner with Narrowcasting "Super Portals".

The secret to making the vertical search model work for GlobalSpec is registration. Access to the engine is free to users in exchange for their personal and professional information, which lets the company generate sales leads for the vendors, who pay between $7,000 and $50,000 to have their catalogs included in the index. But perhaps the most interesting part of GlobalSpec's vertical search engine model is how it is trying to insinuate its way into all the different aspects of a business user's digital life. "The direction we see the Web going is B2B narrowcasting with search at the top of that capability," says Killeen.

But search only works at the top of the business user funnel when it also recognizes and embraces precisely how a particular sector uses the Web. GlobalSpec is indexing more than 100,000 engineering Web sites for their content, while at the same time partnering with the major B2B information ...