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2005 Predictions – Watershed Ground
By Jim Hedger, StepForth News Editor, StepForth Placement Inc., January
5, 2005
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First of all, on behalf of the StepForth team, please accept our wishes
for a happy, prosperous and peaceful new year.
Three weeks ago we promised our predictions for the coming year. Here
they are. Please remember, we are techno-geeks, not psychics. Some of
these predictions
may come true and some may be way off base. We do know the search industry is
evolving faster than ever before. What seems fantastic today may well be reality
next month. 2004 was an interesting year in the business of search, setting the
stage for what should be a watershed year in 2005.
2004 was an amazing year for the search engine marketing sector. Over
the past year, search has become the most important aspect of the World
Wide Web, eclipsed
only by Email as the most widely used online application. Benefiting from a highly
profitable year, the Big3 of Google, Yahoo and MSN enter 2005 with what appears
to be a lock-hold on the future of the sector.
The next twelve months will change the way we relate to information,
not only over the Internet but in the offline world as well. There will
be a lot more
of it available at the click of a button. Aside from thirsty searchers, the first
to be affected will be traditional information outlets such as libraries, encyclopedias,
newspapers and telephone directories. Traditional media will start to feel a
significant financial pinch as information provision moves from print to digital
mediums. How the traditional information outlets will cope with these changes
remains to be seen but for the time being, expect many to follow the old adage, "if
you can't beat them, join them".
The move towards personalization by the major search engines will result
in a change in the way sites are designed and the way SEO is practiced.
PHP design
enthusiasts will rejoice as regionally unique information-inserts become a major
tool in the advanced SEO sector. Another strain of doorway page dependent SEO
techniques will also evolve but given the changing requirements of an increasing
number of search tools, the techniques might not be considered "black-hat" entirely.
It will likely become a case of "it ain't what you do it's the way that
you do it."
Search engine spiders have become far more powerful than ever before
reading and recording information from file types they were previously
unable to access.
As more information is accessible through search engines, a series of major algorithm
shifts is inevitable. We know that both MSN(beta) and IBM are working to introduce
what are being referred to as "Third Generation" search tools designed
to find context in specific phrases and paragraphs found on pages in their indexes.
Expect the others to follow suit.
Broadband access will peak above 75% for most US home users in 2005.
Now that legal challenges between the cable firms and telephone companies
in the US seems
to have been settled, US consumers will continue their mass-migration towards
high-speed connectivity at home. Like most waves of migration, this will have
an enormous impact on the business of entertainment. The availability of high-speed
home access will spell the end of the big-business of entertainment distribution
firms such as the mainstream music industry. As the RIAA did not take advantage
of the two-year time lag between the United States adopting broadband and the
rest of the wired world enjoying high-speed connectivity, many of their members
will find themselves unprepared to cope with increasing digital demand from consumers.
Expect to see a round of mergers and conglomeration in the music industry as
smaller players team up to stave off the inevitable.
SEOs will start to see and use phrases like "Web-Document(s)" as often
as they see or use the word-phrase "web site(s)". Search engine listings
now reference material from sources that can no longer be consistently described
as "websites". For instance, a unique video file referenced by Google
might or might not be housed on the same server as the web page that links to
it. Similarly, that web page might or might not reside on the same server as
the rest of the website it is a part of. Therefore links found on Search Engine
Results Pages do not necessarily refer to websites as is the current norm, but
will increasingly point to specific web-documents. This trend will lead to the
development of page-specific SEO techniques and may result in a regression of
SEO techniques back towards doorway or leader pages.
Someone far wiser than me will coin a better term than “web-documents”
Jim Hedger will be beaten to a pulp in certain SEO forums for the first
fifteen days of the new year for even suggesting Doorway pages might
make a come back.
Several new types of vertical search engine will be introduced.
Most will be based on a user-pay model in which the user pays to find and
download entertainment
materials such as music files, streaming live events and television shows.
We live in a universe in which practically any digital file can be spidered,
indexed
and referenced by search tools. Most pioneering firms will not succeed as
searchers discover they can find the same material through one of
the
major search tools.
Watch for Yahoo to try to enter this arena before the others do.
Somehow, this year will be the beginning of the end for one of the
Big3. Google, Yahoo and MSN each have to make some defining decisions
based on
what the others
are doing. In 2004, each of the Big3 worked to introduce several similar
features and tools such as desktop search and support for Bloggers. By
trying to overextend
themselves against their competition, one of the Big3 will make a fatal
error in judgment leading to a slow but obvious decline.
Google will absorb the Library of Congress but due to Federal funding
cutbacks, no one is around to raise an alarm.
smaller businesses will work to keep the Big3 honest by demanding stronger
organic results. An article earlier today likened the current search
engine world to
a penny-farthing bicycle with the larger front wheel representing PPC
and the smaller back wheel representing organic SEO. As costs for PPC
increase,
expect
to see a quiet revolt amongst smaller PPC advertisers as they begin to
become more sophisticated, switching back and forth between PPC and organic
campaigns
as their sales cycle suits them.
Google needs to figure out the limits of what it seems to think is
infinity. That's enough to drive any corporate culture to distraction.
Fortunately,
Google continues to live in what might as well be an infinite universe
as the scope
of GoogleBots reach keeps growing exponentially. At the same time,
the scope of AdWords real estate is also growing exponentially, thus
providing
plenty
of fuel for future exploration. Google's big problem this year will
be preventing the inevitable backlash as web users learn that increasingly
Google is to
the Web what Microsoft was to PCs a decade ago.
MSN will enter the PPC market by the end of the first quarter. This
prediction is relatively easy to make as MSN has been headhunting
some of the most
well known names in Search Engine Marketing the past few weeks.
smaller search tools such as Ask Jeeves and Vivisimo (Clusty) will
be recognized for their innovations in the field of search. Ask
Jeeves will
market their
backend search engine, Teoma as a stand alone alterative to Google,
MSN and Yahoo with
some degree of success. Vivisimo will finally find marketing firms
that can help them brand their clustering technology with names
search engine
users
can actually
relate to.
Video advertisements will start to appear alongside organic search
results. This is almost a reality as a Texan start-up, SiSTeR.TV
is in negotiations
with several
of the largest search engines. (see Major Player's Update)
The law of Karma will sneak up on Microsoft from two totally different
directions. First, Microsoft will begin to feel a great deal
of heat from the super-hot
Firefox browser. With market penetration of almost 15% in the
last quarter of 2004 and
continued hype, the Explorer browser may find itself in deep
trouble. Secondly, Google is rumoured to be assisting in the development
of a new operating
system that could challenge Microsoft's greatest asset, the Windows
operating system.
Search Engine Optimizers and Marketers will be treated like the
super-stars they really are. StepForth's Head SEO Scott Van
Achte will be asked
to head British
Columbia's government in early May but will turn down the position
as the job is simply not intense enough for his liking.
Ok, that's it for the beginning of this year. One thing I do
know is that by the end of this new year, search engines
will be remarkably
different than
they are today. The Internet as we understand it today will
seem like
a
Model T car
in twelve months time. The Net is about to get faster, bigger
and much more interesting.
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