vertical search engines and directories

Recent window: last 5.4 months (2026-05-01 → 2026-10-11), compared with the prior 5.4 months.

horizontal · 61 members · Data as of 2026-10-14

Vertical search engines and directories index, filter, and organize specialized datasets into dedicated discovery platforms for researchers, professionals, and hobbyists. Unlike general-purpose search engines that scrape the broad web, these tools focus exclusively on single domains like government records, technical documentation, or travel logistics. This targeted approach provides users with structured filters and domain-specific context that broad query engines cannot match.

This theme's recent-window count is below the current min-count filter, so it does not appear in the opportunity scorecard.

Pulled from real Hacker News comment threads on this niche's launches.

Most asked for

Account for event schedules and temporal noise patterns (1)
Raised on How Loud Is My Hotel?
Add ASN data to NS and MX records (currently only on A/AAAA records) (1)
Raised on Browse Internet Infrastructure
Add cobalt bang to global list for non-Kagi users (1)
Raised on My not-for-profit search engine with no ads, no AI, & all DDG bangs
Add pricing information or average price ranges for courses (1)
Raised on I mapped every US golf course
Aggregate stats summary at the top of the page (1)
Raised on H-1B Salary Data Explorer
AI agent-friendly response format (1)
Raised on My independent search engine focused on user control
Author reputation and career-wide bias analysis across bibliography (1)
Raised on Evidex
Better hover interaction for zoomed-out view (cursor feedback, easier point selection) (1)
Raised on I computed livability for all of Germany by rent, commute, and QoL

Concerns raised

100 searches per month for $16 is low value (1)
Raised on I built a better GitHub search that rank repos by what matters
Author/institutional bias and reputation masking not detectable by algorithms (1)
Raised on Evidex
Batch processor slow at 30k documents/day with BERT embeddings (1)
Raised on My independent search engine focused on user control
Confusing whether this searches repos or sites (1)
Raised on I built "Google" for searching Shadcn blocks on the web
Crawler bugs limiting speed to 1-2M pages/day instead of expected 30M (1)
Raised on My independent search engine focused on user control
Cross-language pattern search is unreliable and not yet feasible (1)
Raised on GitHits
Currency conversion bug - returns USD prices when user specified UK (1)
Raised on Deep Research for Flights
Currently just a DNS lookup tool, not a complete wire/infrastructure graph yet (1)
Raised on Browse Internet Infrastructure

Compared to

Brave Search (2)
Raised on My not-for-profit search engine with no ads, no AI, & all DDG bangs, My independent search engine focused on user control
Google (2)
Raised on My not-for-profit search engine with no ads, no AI, & all DDG bangs, I built a social-first search(X, Reddit, TikTok) cause Google is boring
Kagi (2)
Raised on My not-for-profit search engine with no ads, no AI, & all DDG bangs, My independent search engine focused on user control
Marginalia Search (2)
Raised on My not-for-profit search engine with no ads, no AI, & all DDG bangs, My independent search engine focused on user control
allzonefiles.io (zone file data provider) (1)
Raised on I built a search engine for all domains on the internet
ChatGPT 5.2 Extended (1)
Raised on Evidex
Cochrane reviews (1)
Raised on Evidex
Cohere embeddings (1)
Raised on Semantic search over Hacker News, built on pgvector

Members

Name	Source	Upvotes ▲	Launched
LLMNet	HN	29	2026-01-25
Evidex	HN	36	2025-12-29
aayans-yc-indexor	GITHUB	50	2026-09-22
Browse Internet Infrastructure	HN	110	2026-02-09
My not-for-profit search engine with no ads, no AI, & all DDG bangs	HN	199	2025-12-29
Firecrawl Research Index	PH	216	2026-06-19
I mapped every US golf course	HN	223	2026-07-26
Will my flight have Starlink?	HN	276	2026-03-18
GovAuctions lets you browse government auctions at once	HN	319	2026-04-06
jev-search	GITHUB	363	2026-09-17
Pardonned.com	HN	501	2026-04-11