• by Tameka Kee , June 6, 2008

While Microsoft and Yahoo duke it out for Google's search market share leftovers, entrepreneurs in the search space are choosing to take the vertical route to attract eyeballs and ad dollars.

For example, Twing and Yidio are two new search startups serving Internet users on the hunt for forums and discussion boards, and video clips, respectively. And both companies have unique monetization opportunities in the works.

Jersey City, N.J.-based Twing rolled out a public beta at the end of March, although the online community and forum search engine actually went live in January. Currently, the engine boasts about 15,000 public forums in its index, with algorithms that can search through all the conversations in a particular thread.

Users can search by categories (such as arts and entertainment, or government, law and politics) or by topic across categories, as well as by forum and subject popularity. Twing's advantage over a core search engine is that its algorithms don't consider factors like inbound and outbound links or page load times when it comes to indexing and ranking the results. Instead, the technology focuses purely on the content.

Contextual ads, powered by Google AdSense, run alongside most of the forum search results. According to Scott Germaise, Twing's director of product management, the high level of user involvement (from time spent searching, to participation in Twing's own forums), as well as the customization features (users can sign in, set up their own search parameters and get RSS feed updates) make the engine an ideal property for high-quality, targeted advertisements.

"Forums may not be as sexy as blogs or social networks, but they're ingrained into the way people use the Web," Germaise said. "There may be two dozen comments on a really polarizing blog post at best--but there's a real, deep, ongoing discussion in a forum--and a demonstrated interest in a particular subject or product. So while companies struggle to figure out how to monetize blogs and social networks, advertisers are actually using Twing to connect to people that are clearly in search of what they're offering."

For the team at Yidio, there was one prime reason to enter the increasingly crowded video search market. "There's no real big name that's doing video search well yet," said Adam Eatros, Yidio's president. "What better time is there to jump in?"

The San Diego-based video search engine is a division of 2ten Media, LLC, and launched in the beginning of June. Yidio indexes content from major online video portals like YouTube, media outlets like Fox News and CNN, as well as local TV providers such as WPXI Pittsburgh and WJZ Baltimore.

Users can search by category and channel, and Yidio also offers a crash course in Boolean search parameters--as users can refine their searches by adding modifiers like "title:" and "sort:" to their keywords. Yidio lists all the Boolean parameters on the Help page, so users don't have to remember them. There's also the option to search by language and clip popularity.

But Eatros said that Yidio's most promising search feature is the ability to peruse videos by location. The engine gets a steady stream of local video, and since it segments visitors based on their IP addresses, there's the opportunity to serve geotargeted video ads.

"Currently, we aren't focused on monetizing, although we do have AdSense video and rich media ads alongside some of the results," Eatros said. "But the local video angle is an interesting option for us, because local companies could serve pre-roll ads, how-to videos, or even sponsor a whole channel just for users in their area."