Vertical search
Vertical search is search focused on one kind of content or one field, like products, jobs, travel, maps or videos.
Vertical search is search focused on one kind of content or one field. Amazon is vertical search for products, YouTube for videos, Indeed for jobs, Booking.com for hotels, Google Maps for places. A general search engine like Google covers everything. A vertical one goes deep on one thing.
For a marketer, vertical search is often where buying decisions happen. Someone looking for a sofa may skip Google and go straight to a marketplace, and someone looking for a coffee shop may only ever open Maps.
Why it matters for SEO
Each vertical has its own rules for ranking. On a marketplace that might mean sales, reviews and price. On Maps, distance, reviews and how complete your profile is. On YouTube, how long people watch. Doing well in Google doesn't carry over, so you need a plan for each vertical your customers use.
General search engines also pull vertical results into their pages: shopping listings, local maps, video rows, flights. That's how a product listing or a map pin can outrank a web page.
Vertical search inside AI platforms
AI platforms are building their own verticals. ChatGPT can answer a buying question with product cards, prices and links to shops. Some platforms book, compare or check out on the person's behalf. Shopping assistants inside retailers, such as Amazon's Rufus, answer from that retailer's own catalogue.
For example, someone asks ChatGPT for a coffee grinder under £100. Instead of a list of web pages, they see product cards from several shops. If Kestrel Roasters' grinder isn't in the product data ChatGPT draws on, it won't be a card, however good its product page is.
In AnswerOrbit
Shopping shows which products appear in ChatGPT's product cards for your prompts, which brands they belong to, how often yours come first, and which shops ChatGPT sends people to. Shopping answers come from ChatGPT only. Assistants that don't show their sources, like Amazon's Rufus, are among the things we can't see.