Convera Corp., provider of vertical search services for publishers, and Nielsen Business Media today launched a specialized search engine for the kitchen and bath industry. Individuals comprising this industry will have access to relevant information on products, services, industry trends, news, showcases, design ideas, installation tips and other content.
“Vertical search is increasingly rising up in priority level with regards to publishers’ digital initiatives,” said Michael Pieri, director of B2B publishing at Convera. “Our initial clients feel they can leverage Convera’s search capabilities and become an authoritative stopping point for very specific Web search.
“Convera builds and hosts app while providing publishers a back end control panel to easily manage search applications with little editorial time,” he said. “Publishers are hoping initial efforts yield a previously untapped revenue stream that continues to grow as traffic increases on site.”
Convera developed the site at www.KitchenandBathSearch.com in collaboration with industry experts from Nielsen Business Media, including the editors of Kitchen and Bath Business magazine and the producers of the industry’s largest tradeshow, Kitchen and Bath Industry Show and Conference.
“Our strategy is to develop products that respond to the changing information wants and needs of the Kitchen and Bath professional,” said Cory Smith, vice president, Kitchen and Bath Group, Nielsen Business Media.
KitchenandBathSearch is designed to be a desktop resource for the professionals in this marketplace that need relevant product information and design ideas for their projects but have little time to search for ideas.
The kitchen and bath industry is a $70 billion industry focused on design, sales, and installation of kitchen and bath products for new home construction and remodeling.
“The site gives early adopter publishers an advantage by offering top marketers a sponsorship or keyword ad buy on unique service,” Pieri said. “You can track who is searching what and where and feed back stats on high value customers to key marketers who are encouraged to renew ad buys.”
The Kitchen and Bath search engine will also reside on Nielsen’s Kitchen and Bath Business Web site and affiliate sites.
“Publishers feel they can use as part of this arsenal to build community features around the site – options that encourage end users to bookmark,” Pieri added.
Pieri said having an engine specifically for this market is beneficial because the more specific the niche the better.
“We filter out all the noise that one would encounter in typical Web search on Google or any other major search engine,” he said. “We create a ‘walled garden,’ where end users retrieve highly relevant search results and have access to other functionalities which major search engines currently do not offer.
“We anticipate typical users will be of the professional nature or high value consumers like architects, designers, manufacturers and distributors,” Pieri added.
