The potential of vertical search engines to wrestle web traffic away from search giants like Google was a topic of debate at yesterday’s AOP forum.

The nature of vertical search, according to the speakers, points readers towards hand-pick sources and presents results in a more dynamic and user-friendly way than the major search engines.

These could be key advantages in the battle to reclaim web traffic from Google and its contemporaries, according to speakers Jonny Orange, media and publishing account manager at Endeca, Simon Baptiste, strategic product manager at FAST, and Daniel Pollock, vice president and lead analyst at Outsell Inc., in the audio below.

[audio:http://www.journalism.co.uk/sounds/google2.mp3]

While agreeing that publishers can ally against Google and other search engines by denying them access to content – see clip below – Graeme McCracken, chief operating officer for Reed Business Search, said Google should be seen as both a challenge and an opportunity for publishers.

[audio:http://www.journalism.co.uk/sounds/google1.mp3]

McCracken also announced that RB’s B2B vertical search engine had attracted 350,000 unique users over the last month.