Dubbed as Health Search, the beta service is powered by Mamma.com’s core meta search engine and CloserLook Search Services to deliver real-time, online querying capabilities against multiple healthcare-specific content resources and sites.
Mamma.com says its solution differs from other search products and portals – like Google, Turbo10.com, WebMD and Answers.com – that simply list results from content providers and often require users to have an encyclopedic knowledge of which sources to select for queries.
This is where CloserLook’s tailored business information search and data aggregation expertise comes into play.
Health Search also has the added benefit of being able to click-through directly from the results page to the original information source; most rival search engines take users to the site’s home page. Mamma.com refers to this technique as deep web search.
We don’t just present user listings, we intelligently aggregate content in a consistent fashion for users, said Guy Faure, CEO of Montreal-based Mamma.com.
Mamma.com plans similar deep web search forays into several other verticals later this year. Users have been asking us to provide credible and objective public search service for healthcare, which is why we haven’t monetized the solution with ad banners or sponsored links, said Faure.
But Faure does see an opportunity to monetize the Mamma.com search engine in other deep web vertical solutions, like travel. We already have a long list of verticals and are working on prioritizing that list.
Mamma.com’s business model is slowly evolving away from pay-per-click search engine to one-stop-shop for online advertisers.
However the company is going through a rough patch at the moment. It is currently being investigated by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for alleged stock manipulation that caused a its planned acquisition of desktop search vendor Copernic Technologies Inc to fall through this April.
Worse still, the company’s auditor unexpectedly quit forcing the company to scramble out miserly results last quarter which saw a disappointing loss and drop in revenue.
We’re cooperating [with the SEC] and believe there’s been no wrongdoing on our part, Faure said. We’re ready to fiercely defend ourselves in any class action suits.
He added the company would continue to pursue its stated merger and acquisition strategy. We’re still financially healthy and sitting on over $26m in cash. Faure hinted that Mamma.com is on the lookout at technologies that add value to its extensive ad network business.
Vertical search is widely acknowledged by vendors and industry as the next evolution of search, adding greater relevance to search results, and seems to be all the rage these days. Search engine giants like Google Inc, Yahoo Inc and MSN are set to square off in the industry’s first ever vertical search conference in California next week.
The Vertical Leap conference in Santa Clara features will also bring together over 25 search engine start-ups hoping to get more funding from Silicon Valley VCs to help differentiate themselves from the big three.
