An even newer trend in search engines is the development of specialty portals, commonly called vertical market portals or vortals. They are very specific on particular topics, so they tend to accurately filter out irrelevant documents. A vortal is a mini-version of a search engine or subject directory, focused on a particular subject or topic. What differentiates most vortals from other tools is that they usually offer an online marketplace for providing goods and services to that industry. That means vortals can be excellent resources for finding business information and testing the climate of that business field.
Vortals can be extremely pro-business and will likely have a bias when compared to other topic specific directories. Vortals are usually made up of a specialized directory, and also offer listings compiled by a focused crawler. A great collection of vortals is SearchKing.
Seminconductor Online is a vortal for the semiconductor industry. It is the starting place for information about that industry and for everyone who works in that industry. A legal vortal is FindLaw a central clearinghouse for legal information. Energy Central is a key site for nuclear power and electric energy issues.
Focused crawlers are the search engine equivalent of specialized directories. Like a specialized directory, a focused crawler only looks for and indexes web sites about a specific subject. However, they do so not with human editors, but with automated crawlers, so they have the focus of a specialized directory and the searching and indexing capabilities (and increased volume of information) of a search engine. They crawl a limited number of websites on that particular subject and tend to crawl them more thoroughly and more often.
Focused crawlers allow you to find information quickly on a very specific topic. Just as your best source for the latest and most accurate news online is the website for a newspaper or a television or radio station rather than, say, a discussion group, your best source of information for a topic is a focused crawler. Sure, you could still find a topical news story from a general search engine or a discussion group, but it is not the most reliable or efficient way to search. Why go for a generalist, when you can get topic-specific help? Search engines are not the ultimate tool for your detailed information needs.
Using focused crawlers - in effect specialized search engines - allows you to pre-filter searching for specific countries and within general topics. It also helps you avoid vague terms. Some focused crawlers are superb research tools.
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