Search Engines Dig Deeper, Wider
A screen shot of Daum
By Cho Jin-seo
Staff Reporter
If you are looking for a good, affordable French wine, you may consult the 4,519 posts on Yahoo's blog search engine. Or, you could visit the wine search engine on Daum and make your choice among some 500 labels available.
Focus and concentration is the new mantra of Web search engines. Every week they are adding more specific knowledge into their databases. They then provide it to users in separate and specified sections, rather than showing thousands of web pages in a single list like Google does.
The so-called ``specialized searching'' is the hot trend in the Internet search industry here. Due to meticulous demands from Internet users and fierce competition among Web sites to win advertisers, portals are continuously upgrading their searching techniques into a level that excels Google and other foreign engines, at least for Korean-language sources.
``Portal users, who were used to `consolidated searching,' are becoming more selfish. They don't want to see a long list of Web sites any longer. They want to see information tailored to their queries,'' said Sunny Park, Yahoo Korea's public relations official. ``The focus of Web searching is rapidly shifting from quantity to quality.''
South Korea is one of a few nations where Google has little presence because of local search engines' strong performances. Naver has dominated the field with its ``consolidated search'' system, which shows multiple sections of search results for a single query. The service now processes almost 80 percent of all search queries by Korean Web users.
To increase their shares of the pie, Naver's smaller competitors, such as Daum, Yahoo Korea and Paran, have been focusing on more specific fields that Naver has overlooked.
Paran is attracting young video and computer gaming audiences with its game search engine. Daum introduced wine searching in partnership with liquor distributor Doosan last year. It also has a vast database of medicine where people can find out the reasons behind doctors' prescriptions.
Yahoo Korea, which has a much different structure from its U.S. version, has been digging deep into blogs. Even though Naver has tried to block its blog pages from external search engines, Yahoo has somehow infiltrated it. It says that it now has access to some 150 million posts on 7 million blogs in Korea, the largest volume in the industry.
Most recently, Daum, the No. 2 player after Naver, expanded its search engine coverage to cafes ― the free, autonomous online communities, which were open only to members. The decision sparked protests from some cafe managers, but Daum lifted the barrier.
Daum says that there are some 400 million posts on its 7.2 million cafes. They include practical information, such as best camping sites for family trips, suitable gifts for wedding anniversaries, and how to overcome depression from failed stock trading.
Daum spokesperson Lee Seung-jin said the firm sees a meaningful increase in the number of visitors on the launchings of specific search functions. Encouraged, the site recently increased the size of its search query window on its top page.
``The newest trend in the portal industry is always reflected on the top page,'' said Yahoo's Park. ``Daum's bigger search window means that portals are now going back to the basic ― the Web search.''
``specialized searching'' was niche market in search-engine market.
many number of visitors on the launching of specific search function means customers prefer basic function of search-engine more than blog,cafe and news etc.
South Korea is one of a few nations where Google has little presence because of local search engines' strong performances.The reason why they prefer to such sites is only easy to access and comfortable to use for Korean netizens. In contrast to that, foreign web sites are not easy to access and not get accustomed to it as well.
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