Search gurus see big bucks in the enterprise

Some big names in search met on Thursday at the Red Herring East conference in Boston and allowed their brains to be picked by venture capitalists eager to find the next good idea.

Among the intriguing possibilities raised was that enterprise search could soon turn into a huge business on par with web search.

A panel consisting of Ask.com, Answers.com, Truveo/AOL and Microsoft search gurus deflected a slew of questions. Who do you think are the next big search companies to watch? Who's going to go public? How are we going to monetise video search? Is it better to be a video search engine, or allow people to watch the video on your site once they find it?

Similar to what industry experts said of mobile video earlier in the week, it's not the technology holding things up. It's figuring out how to monetise all these new things, said the panellists.

The panellists said they were impressed with search engines like ZoomInfo.com, the job candidate search engine, and Mahalo, the search engine started by publishing entrepreneur Jason Calacanis that uses human-created results for the most popular searches.

While Mahalo is considered unique, none of the panellists sees it, or any other significant breakthrough on the horizon, as changing the definition of search.

The big money, some said, is in an area the general media just isn't paying attention to: enterprise search engines.

Endeca, a company that offers customised search engines for the enterprise, among other services, will do about $100m in revenue this year, according to Don Dodge, a manager of search and the director of business development for Microsoft's emerging business team.

Dodge said: "Endeca is going to be the next billion-dollar company in Boston. They are focusing on enterprise search, which very few people pay attention to because it's not sexy like web search... And I think they will go public soon."

Candace Lombardi writes for CNET News.com