Since the cost of entry into the online vertical aggregator business is low compared to offline, more and more vertical aggregator web sites are appearing ("creeping up") at the TOP of the SERP's. Click on the "BUSINESS" chorus line animated image to see their happy dance.
Have you noticed that when you do a search for a product or service like "golf courses in Connecticut", Google gives you only 2 specific golf course sites, and 
8 vertical aggregator-information sites on the first page (as of 9/30/05)? Now, some online search users may like this, especially if they don't have a specific golf course in mind. However, some aggregator sites don't allow direct links to their listing results at all, or its a paid privilege. On the SERP I just mentioned is #3 = WorldGolf.com, which shows Richter Park Golf Course for Danbury, CT. with a link to "Course Comments", but none to the actual course web site. However Richter Park G.C. does have a web site with much more information (I didn't link to it as you can't "back-button" to come back here!). TheGolfCourses.net at SERP #5 shows Richter Park for Danbury with a link to their own limited information vs. the actual web site"s complete information.
#10 on that same SERP is SuperPages.com which does take you to a link to Richter Park G.C. (having four out of the seven "Yellow Pages - Listings"), once you enter "golf courses in Danbury", CT. So, to be fair, many of the better "value added" aggregator sites, especially "shopping" and "comparison" sites, do save the user time and money. It all depends what the user is looking for, and how high up on the SERP's are the better value driven vertical aggregators.
These functional (or dysfunctional) aspects of the ever increasing vertical aggregator web sites may be small annoyances to many end user-consumers. Some may even like and want the value added "one stop shopping" with product rating-comparison information, general product research information, and reviews of service companies. To others, it is the "way it is", and you just have to deal with it. By the way, "Vertical Aggregator Creep" is different than "Vertical Creep" which means more and more of "vertical search types which we can select by tabs. Depending on the engine, these include image, news, local, and product searches, audio, video, etc."
In my next post, I will look at the "dark side" of Vertical Aggregator Creep from the client-advertiser-marketer side of things.
Animated image courtesy of www.artie.com.
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