#1 - This Real-Time Search Thing is Outta Here
Microsoft initially beat Google to the punch in announcing their integration with Twitter data in their SERPs. And in response, last Monday, Google released what is, in my opinion, an early test version of Twitter integration that's nowhere near ready for prime-time. Google has a history of jumping the gun to prevent other companies from stealing the press narrative, but in this case, I think it's seriously damaging (and nearly everyone, consumer or search enthusiast, agrees) their usability and relevance.
As Danny Sullivan notes, it's like we're back to Infoseek in 1997. If you want to rank #1, don't worry about quality content, relevance or popularity, just be the last person to Tweet about a topic and you'll come out on top (at least, for a few seconds).
This is, in my estimation (and many others), the worst implementation of new results Google's ever implemented. I imagine the clickthrough and abandonment stats have their usability folks up in arms already, and it's only to preserve face from a PR perspective (as well as an increasingly prideful attitude of "Don't like it? So what are you gonna do about it?" that Aaron Wall describes in a gutting fashion here) that this has stayed in place as long as it has (1.5 weeks).
In 2010, I think this fades away. Perhaps not entirely, but we won't be seeing it for nearly as many queries with the prevalence we do today. Google may love real time, and it's certainly gotten them a lot of press (though very little of it is entirely positive), but they can't continue sacrificing quality for PR in this fashion. I think the engineers still run things over there, and the stats data is already making them balk. Although I don't have numbers, my impression is that we're already way down in the quantity of queries showing real time results compared to last week.
#2 - Twitter's "Link Graph" is the Real Deal
All that real-time integration bashing aside, I'm a firm believer in my original hypothesis that Twitter is cannibalizing the web's link graph. In fact, I think a rough history of "recommendation sources" looks something like:
Google has always strived to keep up with the latest ways that content is being recommended and suggested. It's how they determined popularity and relevance with PageRank and I think Twitter's data is merely the next evolution. Just yesterday, they launched their own URL shortening service (I think this was more to get data, but it's also possible it was a pre-emptive PR strike against bit.ly, who launched their PRO service just a day later).
Google's not going to just take raw number of tweets or re-tweets. I think we're already seeing the relevance and reputation calculations in their decisions of which tweets and sources to show in the real-time results, and I expect that algorithms/metrics like PageRank, TrustRank, etc. will find their way into how Google uses the real-time data. Today, SEOs want to turn tweets into links so they can get SEO benefit. My feeling is that tweets are going to carry their own weight in helping pages rank in the not-too-distant future.
#3 - Personalized Search is Here to Stay
Unlike real-time's temporal nature in the results, I think personalized search is here for the long haul. Google released their "permanent" personalization of results last week, and Bing released their own just this week. As usual, SearchEngineLand's coverage is impeccable, though one big question remains in my mind:
What metrics impact personalization?
Is it merely clickthroughs from the organic results? Does visit history play a role? Or clicks from other vertical search services Google offers? What about clicks from paid search ads - either in the SERPs or from AdSense/DoubleClick?
I'd love to see experimentation done on this front so marketers have a better idea what they're dealing with. If it's proven that you can get organic benefits by attracting PPC clickthrough, this may be the new "paid inclusion" for 2010, and could drive bid prices up massively as companies compete not only for paid listing clicks, but for the chance to earn "organic" positioning as well.
Personalization means a few things for SEOs, but it doesn't fundamentally change the game, IMO:
- The Rich Get Richer - It's now truer than ever. If you rank well, and earn solid traffic, you're going to be even harder to unseat. Startups and upstarts are going to have an even greater uphill battle to climb than before.
- Branding is More Important - you want your loyal visitors and fans scouring the SERPs for your listings, and clicking them more so than anything else. I expect some clever spammers are going to be manipulating this with everything from Mechanical Turk to virus infections that make their browser search for their brand and click those results. We'll see if Google has good protections in place to defend against this.
- There is No Normal Ranking - Or, at least, there's no "normal" ranking that's "average" in a personalized SERPs world. Rank tracking may still carry some value to understand how non-personalized searchers see your pages, but that data is going to be less useful in comparison to what your analytics report about search traffic and the trends. Win the "personalization" battle, and you may start to care less about the classic "rankings" battle.
Whenever we encounter these "paradigm changing" events in the SEO world, I like to go back to my philosophy about SEO fundamentals. From what I can see, it looks like things haven't changed enough yet to warrant panic. It's been a massively dynamic 3 months, but we're not on the precipice of anything that's going to shift SEO in the ways some previous "game-changers" have.
#4 - It's Going to Be a Two-Engine, 80/20 World
The latest figures suggest that Google continues to slowly gain market share in the US, while Bing & Yahoo! compete for share that will eventually belong to them both (once the regulatory hurdles clear, which I think they will). I believe that a year from now, most webmasters will be looking at a scenario where Comscore/Hitwise reports Binghoo! has ~25-28% market share, but those engines combine to send a little under 20% of all search traffic (remember that they count searches on all Microsoft and Yahoo! properties - even internal searches - while Google tends to send the vast majority of their search traffic externally to other sites).
#5 - Site Explorer & Linkdomain will Disappear
Tragically, everything I hear out of Yahoo! and Bing is that Site Explorer is off to the great beyond. The expense of maintaining a web index isn't something Yahoo!'s willing to invest in once they don't have to, and Bing's given no indication that they're going to re-open the portal to link information. The best we can hope for is an acceleration in the functionality offered by Bing Webmaster Tools, but even that's unlikely to offer competitive link intelligence.
I'm guessing other services will rise up to try to take Site Explorer's place, as the service had millions of monthly queries run against it.
#6 - SEO Spending Will Rise Dramatically
Forrester put out a great report on US Interactive Marketing Spend (a little pricey at $1749, but interesting). Two graphics struck me as particularly compelling:
SEO trails only social media and online video as places where marketers (not just search marketers, but ALL marketers) will be shifting dollars.
Meanwhile, SEO continues to outpace PPC in terms of CAGR. We've still got a long way to go before balance is established between the share of clicks SEO commands and the fraction of spend it receives, but the gap is slowly closing.
#7 - 2010 is the Year of Conversion Rate Optimization
If I were doing another startup today, it would focus on software for conversion rate optimization. I think this is still the most under-utilized and highest ROI activities in the marketing department, but more awareness is on its way. CRO isn't just about testing; it's about building a process for improving conversion over time. Online businesses can generate so much revenue from this, yet few invest. I think 2010 is the year, simply because it's an inflection point for companies to assess their spend and where they derive value. These guys are likely in for a blockbuster year; I wish I could invest :-)
This graphic comes via my post on choosing which Internet Marketing Channel to Pursue.
#8 - More Queries will Send Less Traffic
Google & Bing are both doing more to make their visitors stickier and get their queries answered without ever having to leave the engine. This is a good product practice for both companies, and I'm surprised Google's taken so long to move away from their "get people off Google" point-of-view, but it's definitely happening. Check out some recent examples:
Everything I need to know is right there - the last game score, the record, the opponent, their next match day and time. The only thing missing? What channel it's playing on in my area.
I don't even have to complete my query! Google's got that weather report sitting in the suggest box. They wrote about this feature here which launched last week. Google O/S had another good post on the topic.
Thankfully, I'm not actually headed to Kodiak, but those results are pretty spiffy, and are likely to prevent me from needing to visit Alaskaair.com and get that flight info.
The customer service number is something Bing's started to provide more and more (though there's one company even they don't have that data on). With Fedex, you don't even need to leave Bing to track a package (Google also offers similar functionality).
My perception is that the more the engines can apply "instant answers" to search queries, the more they will, and the less any other sites will see traffic from those queries. It's a better user experience this way, and I'm certain it's one of the biggest things that engenders loyalty and return queries - something both engines are desperately competing for.
This post isn't intended to be one-sided, and I'd love to hear from you - do you agree? Disagree? Think I'm out of my head? Let everyone know :-)
Especially point 8 should scare the "cr*p" out of every content provider. Also... it could (and in my opinion should) red flag lawyers and judges. Why am I saying that? The engines are starting to do something different then they did before. Normally, they showed some data which triggered people to go the website. They did not or sparselly showed the important data so visitors would go to the website the content was coming from. Now... Engines are more and more "stealing" the data and showing it to everyone without the need to check the source. This is a BAD thing in my opionion since the providers themselves are working to get the data right and are not earning a penny of it. It annoys me a lot to be honest.
It is very similar to the AP complaining about their headlines being taken, as that is often the primary thing people read.
Search engines however will answer that you can always use nosnippet, but then you might not get the click anyway
This begs the question: What info should your website contain that will bring people back frequently and regularly to your site? For a sports site, it used to be things like realtime scores. Now that you can get that info without clicking away from google, it bears some reconsideration.
You can't delete the info - it's still getting you to rank well. But you'll need to come up with something else that will make folks click through now or return later, even if they only came to see the running stats.
That should be the ultimate goal of every site anyway. To give the users exactly what they want, so they continue to come back.
The web is constantly churning and evolving. Expectations are different today than they were 2 years ago. And you can be sure that they'll be different next year or the year after.
"World class" sites get this. They test for usability, they test for conversion, and they are constantly undergoing iterations to improve the users experience.
To paraphrase one of Rand's points,"It's all about conversion rate optimization baby!"
I think (hope) that we're going to see real-time search become more targeted to relevant areas (like news). It's not just an issue of spam, but our entire mindset that recency somehow equals quality. Why is the last Tweet or blog post or even entire site in any given niche the one I should be paying attention to? In some cases, the best information on any given subject is 6 months, a year, or even 2-5 years old. Some of my favorite books, professionally speaking, are decades old. Real-time has it's place, but that place isn't across every single query imaginable.
I also just have to add that you're one of the only people I know who can work a 60-hour week and then apologize for it. You don't have to blog every day ;)
Great point on the relevance of new links. Although the content can be more up to date, that doesn't automatically mean it's going to be of a higher quality and should rank higher.
I do think G should feature a real time section but no way should it be above organic results, it completely goes against what they stand for in my opinion.
Im in the recency doesnt = quality boat too, I also think its a fallacy that recency is important. I personaly feel that trust is the most important element in serach results, and this is currently at odds with recency.
Google have got it the emphasis the wrong way round the moment
wouldnt mind if they rolled the real time features/news etc into a switchable feature.
I can set Google to search in the last week etc, so its a silly thing to assume that the realtime data is the most important. They could just roll it into that feature set
"I also just have to add that you're one of the only people I know who can work a 60-hour week and then apologize for it."
Yeah Dr. Pete. I wondered about that statement when he made it. Apparently his board's advice still hasn't sunk in!
I don't believe real time search is going to be thrown out the window. I believe Google, Bing or whomever is displaying these results will develop a better algorithm.
Right now users can just spam results by stuffing keywords and hashtags within their tweets and status updates. If search engines were to implement an algorithem that took number of followers, number of site visits for blogs, times the post was RT'd and other popularity and influence factors I believe the social search results would be a lot more effective.
If I were Google I would treat hashtags in tweets with as much suspicion as they treat META keywords in web pages - it really should only be considered alongside x other variables.
Amen to "2010 is the Year of Conversion Rate Optimization"
I'm a big believer in the importance of CRO. It's as important as ranking in the SERP's if not more so.
Maybe SEOmoz can start running more articles in the blog about it?
Rat's! I didn't look to see where I'd land with my comment and I landed right below a spammer that makes it looks like I'm echoing them!!! Please don't thumb me down :o
Consider your spam proximity problem solved.
hear hear!
Conversion rate optimisation - what's the point of promoting your shop to the prime location in the shopping mall if the electronic tills are faulty?
An ongoing CRO program is the "gift which keeps giving".
Nice predictions Rand! I will plus one thing that I realized only after read this post...
With the new Google URL Shortening servive they can track a lot of links posted on Twitter and Facebook, this can be used as a signal too. I know that you mention about "reading" every tweet or facebook update, but with their own URL shortening service they can track real time clicks, and can use it as a QDF signal. What you think?
Great article Rand. Only I don't agree with the 4th prediction:
"#4 - It's Going to Be a Two-Engine, 80/20 World".
I think we should start considering new (well not so new tbh) players:
Baidu is already used by 281million people.
Yandex is by far the most popular Search Engine in Russia.
If I can add a "prediction" I would say 2010 is going to be the year where SEO is definately going multilingual! Be Global: SEO Local.
There is a huge opportunity out there and, as someone said once: "If I sell I have to speak your language If I buy tu devi parlare la mia lingua" :-)
I disagree with you considering Baidu and Yandex. To be a successfull search engine you must act global. These are local search engines only.
Of course, for their country, they are good SE, but not for all world.
I disagree with your disagreement lol.
I am not saying that Baidu is or will be globally as strong as google or bing but I think that not considering it, is a mistake. With over 1billion speakers Mandarin is the most spoken language of the planet.
The results you can achieve having a site doing well in baidu is HUGE!
Anyhow my main point is: google, baidu, yandex... No matter what: in an era of social, personalised, real time search, international, multilingual SEO is extremely important. :-)
I think you also have to consider if Yahoo would discontinue in markets like Japan and Korea where they are stronger than Google, and support other major search engine advertising platforms for networks like Naver.
This is true and I am really curious to see what will happen over there!
I agree, Baidu certinly deserves more attention. With more internet users than the US and Canada combined it can hardly be considered a regional player.(source Internet World Stats )
While the Chinese middle class is not purchasing online as much as other parts of the world, even a small percentage of that market can add to the bottom line. Also, any company or industry doing business with China needs to be aware how they rank on Baidu.
I agree with you Michael. This popular chinese search engine, Baidu now offers a number of services to locate information, products and services using Chinese-language search terms and this plays a major role for online business in China. So getting ranked in them is absolutely important for every businesses tied up with China.
Empowered I think you hit the nail on the head with Google moving it's server to HK and being unable to effectively serve up relevant results - Baidu may well have clinched it.
Kind of curious why G would send the real time search to the masses and not use a sandbox url as they have done in the past.
Much like many others i have to say why so many product releases without fixing what you already have out there.
This post has actually had a kind of calming effect upon me, the fundamentals of seo do and will remain the same and just because real time search and paid ads are above the fold whats to say that regular users of google search will just adopt that same "ad blindness" to the real time results and scroll down to their habitual organic listings that they have been used to using for years?
Microblogging is not exactly mainstream and there may be quite a few that don`t or will not use them (i don`t have any stats to back that up) but for every ying there is a yang.
"and scroll down to their habitual organic listings that they have been used to using for years?"
I think it's already happening on a small scale, or at least some logs I've been viewing. Queries that are on the bottom of page one that are getting a surprising number of clicks.
I'll selfishly agree with your #7 prediction, Rand.
WiderFunnel.com will have a great 2010 too.
Chris
Stunning post, Rand. I hope you will be there in 2010 to guide us along the path.
I definitely think we'll see many more changes to Personalized Search in 2010 on an accelerated curve. I see Google working much harder to provide more relevant search results. Clickthroughs will be important, but I think bounce rates will also play a large role in how Google determines the rankings for Personalized Search results.
Also, I think the allure of Twitter will simmer down in 2010 as more real time messaging technologies are released.
I can personally relate to #8. I was at a holiday party last weekend and curious about the score of the Phoenix Suns at Denver Nuggets game. I went to the trusty G1 and did a search for "Phoenix Suns score", sure enough without ever leaving Google, I had the live score just as in your example above. I did not need to go to another website.
I totally agree with your other 7 predictions too. We are putting together a 2010 predictions series from 10 different Internet experts, it will be interesting to see how closely this all aligns.
I think the big thing people are waiting for is the real big change on Google monitoring how popular a link is on twitter and rewarding that link / site with improved ranking for included keywords etc.
Content that gets passed around a lot on Twitter can be deemed useful and in a lot of instances, unique. This of course could be spammed but that could be said for pretty much every aspect of SEO.
Im hoping they throw news results away along with the real time search thing - if i type gmail, i want the link to gmail to be number 1, not some random press release or wikipedia page. same for facebook, youtube etc
rant over :)
Maybe 2010 can be the year google "got back to basics". Bing may win me over if they copied old google results display
Maybe Bing's marketing has made a big mental inroads, im starting to see problems with google search results that i never saw before
Totally agree, Rand with your comments on all the items, but the #1 Real Time search one hit's home! I too think that it's really not ready for "prime time" and should be trashed immediately! And I'll not miss it at all....
And sadly I too see the loss of the YSE as a major loss too....wonder who'll "rise" to the occasion and come up with the next iteration for us to use?:-)Jim
It seems it is trashed already to the background. When I went to Google.com I had to go to "show options" and click on "updates".
It seems that Google saw the problems already (after huge feedback of the users that is).
Last week it was showing up for me in Google's personalized search. Now it isn't, I have to add &pws=0 for it to show up.
I think Linkscape has already risen to the occasion Jim . If (or rather when) Yahoo's Site Explorer gets 86'd, the value of Pro Membership will GREATLY increase.
Which makes joining now before the inevitable price increases all the more valuable a proposition.
I wholeheartedly agree with points 1, 3 and 8 in particular. I am extremely shocked at the G integration of Twitter and cannot ever recall any such significant SERP change previously, that went live without first bucket-testing. To the average web user, Google is a trusted source of relevent, quality sites, matching search terms and to a certain degree, intent. I just can't imagine that 'search intent' will be to identify social mention; at arate high enough to justify this implementation.
In terms of personalised search, there's a great piece with Marissa Meyer from Sundays Tele https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/6810021/Marissa-Mayer-An-omnivorous-Google-is-coming.html
"Amazingly she doesn’t think her team are that far away from achieving what she calls the ‘omnivorous’ search engine –i.e. one which is able to take a user’s total context – where they are, what they were just reading, which direction their mobile phone is pointed and so on."
In terms of point 8. This makes me kind of sad and nostalgic for a time when search engines helped us by surfacing links to web content; not by surfacing content so completely, as to circumvent the requirement to consult any other source.
There are a lot of great points here, but I'm not sure I agree with real-time search being discarded. I agree that it's not verey relevant, but isn't the point of it to show what people are currently saying about a topic, regardless of relevance? If that's the case, I think it will stay, but improve.
Hola @Westgate!
Not sure if you intended to reply to my comment?
I didn't suggest that realtime search should be binned. Nor did Rand "In 2010, I think this fades away. Perhaps not entirely, but we won't be seeing it for nearly as many queries with the prevalence we do today."
My difficulty with this, is that brand mention and social mention are rarely the search- intent. Therefore to launch this implementation (seemingly) without any testing, is knee-jerk and compromises reputation and relevence.
I can see some useful application of this implementation, such as for celebriterms and gossip. However I still think the implementation (prominence in the running order and position on page) will shift.
Crazy Prediction #9- Faced with stagnant ad revenue from ad fatigue and lower bidding by cash strapped small businesses, Google will release an update that will come to be known as “Karma.”
The long-standing SERPS that have dominated large volume search terms will be moved wholesale to positions 8-20. There will be massive degradation of Wikipedia, universities, and other static non commercial content. However, non-commercial content with adsense will be curiously less impacted by “Karma.”
It will be heard first in the muted murmurings of SEO blogs where people see small advertisers in 7th thru 10th positions moving up steadily, inexplicably. When testing is done, and Google can prove that a company with more natural traffic in turn has a more elastic adword budget, they will flip the switch on “Karma.” This will be timed with some subtle ad campaign put forth in the name of fighting the combined evil of Binghoo. The message will infer how “Googlers Dig Deeper and Smarter.”
Large adword spenders in positions 15 or higher will see a big jump in organic SERPs as Google pushes it's idea that if a company is spending a bunch in adwords, the best way to support that ad budget is to give them more natural traffic and inherently more business and by default, more ad ammo. The wall between organic and paid will naturally crumble and someplace in the quiet corners of an IP law office a patent will be filed where a company’s “assumed revenue” will factor into Google’s algorithm making it all feel scientific and good. The proclamation will be-“of course, why wouldn’t a company’s size and sales not make it more relevant? Isn’t a sale the king indicator I found what I was looking for if my purpose was commercial?”
Fingers will be pointed and some “conspiracy theorists” will point out that the larger the goal value of a conversion in analytics, the higher they seem to rank. Google will admit that a company’s “branding” will have some “indirect impact” on positions but that it is by no means the dominant factor. There will be 1000 voices against and a handful of happy advertisers lurking and grinning in silence as the wheels of capitalism turn on and their Google bill grows, but only in proportion to gross sales.
GOOG $800
Bryan,
You're either a born pessimist, or us small guys better pull up our socks and tape up for a battle. Wouldn't a class action suit of some kind be wonderful. The courts hate the big guy and love the little guys. Taking Google down could be the best thing to happen since Al Gore invented the cloud. Ah, to dream..perchance to dream!
Your comments were well taken. I'm a 30 year marketing veteran, but new to IM and social media. At 61, I've been around the brick and morter block. The Internet holds so many opportunities for advancement of entrepenuers, as long as the playing field gets somewhat leveled. Google may be the biggest hurdle..or the best opportunity we have. It will be interesting to see how it plays out.
Steve Benedict
First of all, I wish you a great holiday time in San Diego. Have fun, switch off Internet (if you can) and enjoy your loved one offline (I will try to follow this schedule in the next days).
My considerations (from a Spanish & Italian market perspective):
#1 - Real-time Search Thing
It's active also in Google.es and Google.it but not in the same way as in Google.com. It's important to notice it's active, as the localized version of Google not always update themselves at the same time as Mom Google.com
Example here:
https://www.google.es/#hl=es&sa=G&tbo=1&tbs=qdr:h&q=seomoz&fp=876a15e5b40ed1b8 ("última hora" in google.es)
and
https://www.google.it/#hl=it&sa=G&tbo=1&tbs=qdr:h&q=seomoz&fp=d523d634c243d3e6 ("ultima ora" in Google.it)
About your issue relative the poor quality of the Real time search, I also wonder what also Twitter and Facebook will do about Spamming in their sites (especially Twitter, if it relies of its search feature). And I hope Google will look at itself in the mirror and remember what really made it a giant.
#2 I believe (as I ask in a Q&A yesterday) that the 'tiny-urls' issue is something that has to be tested and evalueted deeply. If URLs are important for SEO, what about bit.ly and goog.gl? I wonder about the loss of the keyword presence. Will be the amount of tweets and retweets cointaining the tinyurl the factor that will give weight. Or also the importance of the profile who tweeted (so giving some sort of mozRank and mozTrust to perfiles).
#3 You're right. But IMO it's something that is affecting more us SEO as we live all the changes on our skins than the middle user of Search Engines, at least in Spain or Italy. It's something we have to prepare to and study deeply, but the 'classic rank' will rule for in a middle/long time still.
On the other hand, what you say has this corollary that it's important for me: Local SEO and Local Business will be even more important than now. And to be inventive in order to create brand recognition in the case of start ups and upstarts
#4 Thinking about Spain and Italy, it's better to say 90/10 or (being optimistic) 85/15. Google is somehow a monopolistic power in these markets.
#5 Yep, it's a tragical fact. Thanks God there're tools like LinkScape. Eager to see new actualizations of this great tool (what about an IP based country geo-targeting... for me it would be useful to have that info in my LinkScape's sheets)
#6 Spending will rise in Spain and Italy too. I don't have official statistics to show, but is a sensation I have from my personal experience (and the experience of many SEO friends). Considering that Spain and Italy have more a little to middle sized companies economy, even the littlest one is finally understanding the real value of SEO and showing a real interest in it. About Social Media, is actually in a fashion-based euphoria (all wants to be in Facebook, as in 1999/2000 all wanted to be in Internet), so I preview a big drop after as an effect of not having received the desired results (due to bad use of social media marketing)... just then the Social Media Marketers will be considered with the attention they deserves. About Twitter, still not so used here, but growing in attention especially due to the media coverage of the phenomenon.
#7 Somehow this last semester of 2009 was already of CRO. More and more it's also pretended by clients as the unique valid form of guarantee.
# 8 I in part confirm what you say. Just see the same kind of Searches done in a spanish and italian perspective.
Google.es --> Real Madrid
Serp: https://www.google.es/#hl=es&tbo=1&q=real+madrid+&meta=&aq=f&oq=real+madrid+&fp=4bd9ae003aa986a6
Google.it --> Juventus
Serp: https://www.google.it/#hl=it&tbo=1&q=juventus&meta=&aq=&oq=juventus&fp=d523d634c243d3e6
Not so as in Google.com if I do searches as Weather Madrid (Tiempo Madrid) or Weather Milan (Tempo Milano), as it seems implemented in Google.com but not in .es and .it
About Bing... the italian and spanish version still don't offer all the opportunities the US version (Yuk... i so like its 'Search History' and 'Visual Search')... ah, why if i do a search in Bing (usa version) of SEOmoz in the related searches appear "Bank of America"?
Again: have a great holiday time and Merry Christmas to all of you mozzers
I am in complete agreement with your #2 gfiorelli1! I was thinking that this new keyword allowing short URL by Google means that the race is on, like domain registration for the best keywords!
I am also quite interested in the use of proxy servers for international sites, and if they will have a different impact in 2010. Many companies are trying to expand their global presence. Any thoughts?
San Diego?
That's what written in the first paragraph of Rand post.
I couldn't agree more with the comment about latest results and Twitter spam - I can't believe how much gets through the net.
You just have to look at the comments coming through on the latest trending topics - spam automation is rife.
Auto follow, auto re-tweet, auto reply.... the percentage of original messages it low and the percentage of useful messages is even lower.
Twitter can be very useful at times, but it needs a good clean up before it's used in Google search results.
Found a pretty solid SEO for 2010 presentation on scribd...check it out here
I will miss Site Explorer as well.
I had no idea that the weather showed up in the auto suggestion box!
Excellent predictions. Thanks.
i hope it doesnt take to long for a yahoo site explorer type free solution to come out after they pull the plug :(
yes this is true that SEO future will grow next year but competition will also grow like rumors spreads in air.
Hey Rand,
Don't know if you posted anything about it yet but i'm curious how your predictions from last year went. I remember you doing a similar post last year....
Another great post in a string of consistently detailed posts. I used one of the predictions in a post titled "Prediction: Marketers Will Continue to Publish Lots of Lists in 2010" at www.marketingtrenches.com.
In short, while I want to agree that SEO spending will increase dramatically in 2010, I think we may see slower growth than anticipated. When I look at that Forrester chart, it always amazes me to see the gap between SEO and PPC spend. I think the larger publishers and marketers "get it", but the average small/medium business is confused by SEO. Until that segment understands and embraces SEO, I don't think the growth will be in the dramatic category.
Anyway, love the material and the writing. One of my favorite (and most retweeted) blogs.
Mike Sweeney
In my opinion the really BIG thing that is underfoot is personalized search.
Everyone will get his own google number 1 and hopefully, it will be exactly what they were looking for. Which will make SEO all the more challenging, maybe less technical and more human.
Awesome post...a lot of things happening in 2010. Good thing we have linkscape and don't have to rely on Y! site exlorer
Great predictions, and probably right on. The loss of site explorer is going to be a sad one for us all, but it will be interesting to see what arises in its place. Necessity being the mother of invention and all, I look forward to seeing what will arise in its place. Someone is going to capitalize on those millions of queries, it's just a question of who and how.
Think #7 is the winner here :)
Gonna be big this year.
I guess the future is less scientific with more actual thinking involved to guess what and how visitors would be searching. A whole new way to SEO.
Good predictions.
#1 - This Real-Time Search Thing is Outta Here
Real-time search should be left to Twitter. I think Google is losing their way trying to be more competitive. Simplicity is what got them to the top - all this additional clutter and over-information works against it.
#3 - Personalized Search is Here to Stay
I don't really agree with personalized search, not because I'm an SEO, but because I think it's wrong. Like you said, the rich will get richer because the "big dogs" will stay on top, while the mom and pop shops have to work twice as hard to get any notice. Is Google saying that new websites don't deserve to get noticed, or don't have good content?
#6 - SEO Spending Will Rise Dramatically
I'm not sure if SEO spending will increase (because of personalized search). However, I think PPC will surely increase. I hope you are right.
#8 - More Queries will Send Less Traffic
I agree. As the search engines add more features, more people will see it as unnecessary to visit websites. For example, weather info, dictionary, and product search. I noticed that Google recently stopped using Answers.com for their definitions.
Very interesting post, thanks Rand.
It will be fascinating to see how #2 shakes down, especially given Twitter's current vulnerability to link spammers who nonetheless have acquired thousands of followers using auto-follow software.
What metrics will be used to gauge reputation in the Twittersphere? @replies? # of times the person is listed?
#2 Why would these back links be the real deal when most all of them are 301 redirects or nofollowed?
#3 Oh there will and always will be "normal" rnkaings in the top 5. You can see this clearly today for the most popualr queries.
#7 Completely agree. No more SEO reports only conversion reports.
Thanks for the post Rand. Ordinarily, I stay away from the flood of prediction type posts but yours is a very good summary of what is likely to occur in 2010 based on 2009 signals. It'll be interesting to see if you review this sometime in December 2010!
i would not see the real-time search result.
Great list, but I disagree with your first SEO prediction. I think real time search is here to stay and in fact will improve over time. The search engines will find a happy mid point where real time search is incorporated nicely.I referenced this post in my SEO blog at the following link:
https://www.searchengineoptimizationjournal.com/2009/12/22/real-search-2010/
I agree that conversion rate optimization will continue to gain steam. A great book about that is Call to Action. I wrote about increasing converstions back in 2005. I've also made my own predictions for 2010.
I agree that conversion rates will become a greater focus in 2010. It is horrible to say but it seems that sex still sells. We are seeing online banner ads where woman have nothing to do with their product using them to get conversions.
I have a page of testimonials on one of my sites, and the pretty female has more clicks than any other link on the page.
I think search engines should stay away from giving users what they are looking for. Google has the most simple page with just a search bar and that is for a reason. No one wants to be bombarded with cluttered answers. They are they looking for a web site with answers.
Nice Post! Specially the charts representation. Completely agree with "2010 is the Year of Conversion Rate Optimization" point.
Google will probably prefer the new users and increase their search results, I thought it was unbalanced because there will be many new people in this world that will increasingly spurred enthusiasm ..too bad if linkdomain yahoo will disappear, I had never heard the news that Google will also remove google PR, easy I just hope it does not happen, because many bloggers who will start from scratch again. I just learned about my blog and maybe this is just the beginning so no sign of the result,it's usefully..
Google's interpretation of links in social media
The end of "no follow" links?
Be great, given Twitters impact on link bait strategy
First i want to thank mr.randfish. I am beginner to SEO my experience is 1 year only. I am gettting 40% information from your blog clearly. But something i got. its refresh me and direct to right path to do SEO for my sites.
Once again thank you very much.
I'm pretty late to the party regarding comments but its really interesting to see how close we are to some of these predictions.
Also, how can the comment above me realllllly be trying to spam your boards? Sighhhh sometimes I just don't get these guys
A little late to the party, but the idea struck me that perhaps the inclusion of "real time search results" was partially to check their Twitter ranking algorithm. If they are planning to use Twitter links and tweets (and more) as a ranking metric, rolling out real time search would be a great way to test and tweak how they plan on counting / weighing them.
When I was searching for a job in SEO in early 2009 it seemed no one was hiring. Now, I've snagged a job in SEO and I'm still getting alerts from careerbuilder and talentzoo every other day about jobs in SEO coming available. So I've got to say that seeing an increase in demand for jobs in this field certianly gives way for a growth in SEO for 2010.
I think the comment about spammers exploiting the feature is definitely going to happen. Hopefully it doesn't damage personalized search for the rest of us!
GREAT post, Randy. We at WiderFunnel *particularly* like #7!
Here are some thoguths... With two and a half years’ experience doing just one thing, conversion optimization tests for clients in all areas and delivering conversion rate lift of up to 290% for them, we have seen a lot of changes – and your observations deserve some pondering and feedback.
• “If I were doing another startup today, it would focus on software for conversion rate optimization” Randy, don’t do that.
Testing software choices available to businesses today are plentiful and the market is very well served. Robust options, ranging in capabilities and pricing (and even “free”), include Google Website Optimizer; Omniture Test & Target; Ion Interactive; Vertster; and others.
We at WiderFunnel work with clients using different tools and, as a technology-agnostic firm, are free and unbiased to recommend the right testing tool to the right client at the right stage of their company’s adoption of conversion optimization as a strategy.
At the end of the day, conversion optimization success is never about the testing tool: there are already many excellent tools available.
• “I think this is still the most under-utilized and highest ROI activities in the marketing department, but more awareness is on its way.”
Randy, on this one you are right.
When we first started WiderFunnel, we would spend a lot of time explaining what testing is all about, trying to cause an “Aha! Moment” where prospects would suddenly (well, after a one hour presentation) “discover” that it was dramatically cheaper and far less risky to run conversion optimization tests than to keep throwing marketing dollars at Search campaigns.
Things have changed.
We now get a steady stream of well-educated prospective clients who contact us knowing what conversion optimization is all about and asking how we work with clients.
Most importantly, we now get a very high percentage of prospective clients who have already dabbled at testing themselves (both with free and with paid testing tools) and have realized that conversion optimization isn’t just “one more thing” their in-house staff can do: they know they need experts to deliver a sustainable and scalable testing strategy for them if they are to optimize the complete site and stay ahead of the competition.
• “CRO isn’t just about testing; it’s about building a process for improving conversion over time.”
Randy, again, this one is bull’s eye!
After two and half years of running tests for clients, we have learned that conversion optimization success is NEVER about the testing tool they choose and ALWAYS about two factors:
1. The right test hypotheses (or “knowing what to test”)
2. The right (and scalable) process (as in “Can you execute properly in the areas of web analytics; conversion optimization strategy; test design; variable content placement; wireframing; graphic design; copy and modifications; layouts and mock-ups; technical installation; HTML; real-time results analysis…?”).
WiderFunnel Marketing Optimization does all that for clients, consistently.
• “Online businesses can generate so much revenue from this, yet few invest.”
Randy, again you are right here.
So many marketers still look for the silver bullet: that shiny new idea that pleases their eye and their ego and which can be done with relatively little work.
However, current economic conditions, where the CFO continues to cut the marketing budget and demands marketing actually increase its productivity and deliver even higher ROI, is changing all this.
And it is changing on a daily basis: we are seeing not only greater investment in conversion optimization but a greater realization on the part of marketers that this is a business-model changer for their companies, here to stay.
• “I think 2010 is the year, simply because it’s an inflection point for companies to assess their spend and where they derive value.” Amen to that!
Thanks for this well thought out list of trends to watch next year. SEO will continue to change in reaction to customer demand. I will be watching for more on Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) - that could be a big growth area.
Hi Rand,
How about Google Toolbar PageRank? Will it disappear as stated by Dave Naylor @proseo London?
BTW, this article has been featured in Google News UK!!
Very good analysis Rand. The points that really drive home are the growing importance (or acceptance) of landing page optimization. I'm surprised that local search didn't make the list.
SEO spending is good for the market :-). Seriously, businesses have to realise that a higher ROI is achieved by long-term SEO investment when committing to it. In Spain, for many companies SEO investment is a joke, and when they do tackle it, it is because someone on the top wants it, so it is not a real commitment from the key actors. So I am not at all surprised that SEO spending will grow next year. I am sure it will grow more in Spain than in the USA, where the industry is nearly mature.
Very nice article, btw.
It's unfortunate, but in the U.S., SEOs have a bad rep. It's due to all the scams going on.
In my experience, finding local clients are the way to go because they are able to meet with you face to face, and usually you can deal directly with the business owner.
SEO has a bad reputation in Poland, too (I estimate that 90-95% of SEO is done through link exchange systems...) but it doesn't mean it can't grow...
A lot of companies tend to look at efficiency (finally!) and real benefits and SEO is still a very competitive source of traffic.
I wouldn't agree that going to the local is the only way for SEO to grow - neither in Poland nor at the mature markets such as the US all big companies are experienced in SEO (sometimes websites are not SEO friendly at all) - so there is still a lot of money to be earned in this niche...
SMB is probably more experienced (at least in some areas) while this sector has limited possibilites of e-advertising and SEO is one of the very few means of advertising they could have afford. Working with these businesses may provide you a lot of clients but the average project income will be relatively small. And if you take into account the growing competitiveness it may happen that for a lot of them (new sites, with lot brand awareness thus limited link building potential) SEO may not be efficient enough - for each keyword there are just ten slots at the first page ;-)
With the fold size increasing daily on Google can anybody explain to me how any product web site can continue to pay the increasing cost of advertising weighed against decreasing profits... and is this a reasonable question or am I suffering from acute paranoia.
Please tell me these things as ever since I got into SEO I have a hard time telling the difference between right and wrong. Surely the good fairy would never increase a silly fold for the sake of pure profit.
sundownr
"With the fold size increasing daily on Google can anybody explain to me how any product web site can continue to pay the increasing cost of advertising weighed against decreasing profits... and is this a reasonable question or am I suffering from acute paranoia."
One of the numerous reasons is the increase of conversion rate - in other words, every click (visit) earns more money (more chances to conversion due to better landing pages, purchase process and so on) that is why companies can afford paying more (even though in some areas the profit margin has decreased).
This is also what the whole Prediction #7 is about :-)
Rankings are all about user intent and behavior. Google uses that to push their multibilion dollar business PPC.
Conversion Rate is going to be big in 2010: Track your visitors, see how they navigate your site, what they liked or disliked, give them what they want to keep them on the site for as long as possible and coming back for more.
I was impressed to see the weather in the auto-suggestion box - that's a new one for me - but I wonder how many other people have also seen direct links appearing in the box.
see https://twitpic.com/swz2z for a screengrab of an example.
What a well organized and documented article. I was impressed when I first read it on the 16th, and then again when it popped up on my Google News homepage. Without this kind of plausible information, planning for 2010 and beyond is difficult.
About 85% of professional bloggers will not be with us at this time next year. This is a brutally competitive business and "survival of the fittest" is the name of the game. A committment to follow every aspect of our craft is imperative. I'm reminded of the story of the chicken and the pig..and that famous ham and egg breakfast. If you don't have the committment of the pig, better order pancakes and look for something else to do next year.
Thanks for helping us read some of the tea leaves.
Steve Benedict
Suave Dog
I agree with point 3 (personalized search), but it'll be interesting to see how long of a leash the government is going to allow Google as far as the privacy issues are concerned. As near as I can tell, we've never really had a case where a non-government entity can gather this much information about somebody. Not that I think Google is malicious or anything, but not everybody is as assuming
I think for marketers, the personalized stuff SHOULD be a good thing. While smaller sites may not see as much traffic from Google, the traffic they do get should be much more qualified. That is, if Google is actually able to show people the sites they want to see (and their ability to do that is debatable), then shouldn't those people be more likely to do whatever it is the site they click on would like them to do?
I've never thought of it as an infringement of my privacy, but you've got a good point there.
How does Google even create these 'personalised' results? I use iGoogle as my home page and the majority of my searches, so personalised results are a given; but when it comes to personalising results without having a Google account, what do they do?!
This could be a bit of a security threat if it's personalising the results of government officials etc.
I do hope that Google reconsiders their RT results. I don't like the... randomness of them. They're not really informative, and when they do appear it's just space being eaten up until I find a link I do want.
Really...have to get ready for SEO in 2010!
I think this is a spot-on list that I would share with anyone except for the real-time issue.
I can't imagine real-time going away. I think the refinements will be much better. I think individuals will continued to be mapped a la Google Profiles. I think more real-time results from more sources will be added to the mix.
And I even think Bing will try to squeeze an ad placement above a real-time window.
The engines have always screamed for recency. That's why they overvalued blogs relative to static pages when other quality indicators were similar.
Real-time is like a drug. I've been pushing the notion of SocialRank as a 2010-2011 change. I think that's a part of our future. Real-time won't be the SERP, just like maps and videos aren't the SERP, but recent comments will sure be there.
Google even uses blogs from individuals on Google Finance. They scroll off, but that's a really strong endorsement of recency.
Thanks for this great post, Rand. Lots to chew on. I particularly appreciate it when you post charts and stats from $1800 marketing reports. Please keep those coming :)
-Evan
P.S. Have fun in San Diego next week! I'll be headed the opposite way up North for the holidays but I see you'll be getting together with some very talented marketers while you're here. I wish I could make it!
I'm sure that twitter results will be a valuable asset to the SERPs when they represent a general buzz around a certain term. For example the twitter account that has recently stimulated the most conversion about the term may be displayed. As it stands it just not giving any value. Cheers for the post it was very insightful
wow. what an excellent post! I totally agree that conversion rates will be a huge focus. Especially when it comes to CPM buying, large companies are realizing that the click volume is worthless without the sales/conversions. This is going to extremely true for SEO too, since it can take so much time and resources to achieve rankings for high traffic keywords.
Getting to number one is certainly not enough!
Very informative post. Its interesting to see the traditional forms of media continuing on a downward spiral. Out with the old, in with the new kind of approach. I also like the SERP for fedex. This is very convenient and practical.
Again, what a great post. I don't think real time search is going to be thrown out of the window entirely. There are some instances where it will be still available, especially when you really want to see it (using Google's web options). This also means that they'll have to work more on tweaking that part of the algorithm so that only the more 'trusted' folks' tweets are making it through.
It will be interesting to see what happens when Yahoo Site Explorer is turned off, I be there are going to be a few other tools with link data that will take its place. That presents a huge opportunity for someone who can keep up with the data, though.
Great post as always Randfish. The day that Google announced real-time search updates from Twitter, we had a project manager meeting discussing that this will most likely a) dilute the quality of the Google SERP, b) create a "get rich quick" method for people to get advertisement out, and c) see a rise in Twitter account creation.
As for the Forrestor Research study, I wonder if we'll see a similar increase in interest/spending in the web analytics sector since the items mentioned are all measured by some sort of marketing team that has a grasp of web analytics.
Great post as usual. Yes, I agree that the demise of Yahoo site explorer will be a real shame (I use it all the time). Is there any indication as to when the service will end or is it just a case of sometime soon?
Surely the importance of SEO is going to increase in 2010 and there will be a trend to have In house SEO and PR teams to manage online company reputation.
Though Real Time Search will be the hot topic of 2010 but gradually the organic search results will get its due importance for quality and relevant searches for search.
Search is not only about knowing what is the latest but it is mainly for exploring what is available globally. Inclusion of Real Time Search is the amalgamation of news and search on the search engines. SEO and organic search has its own importance and niche.
Its a damn shame that Yahoo LD is going to disappear, I rely on this metric for so much, and have done for the last four years.
I guess however its a great thing for seoMoz, as your linkscape tool will become far more valuable, (as will majestic seo I guess and anyone else that runs a parallel index of the web)
Correct me if I am wrong, Linkscape too uses similar queries to retrieve data from Yahoo explorer and derive intelligence from it. If it's a gate closed for users, it's a gate closed for Linkscape too.
So my prediction - linkscape too has some work to do in the year 2010 :)
Linkscape is its own crawler built index, not a query to Y...
oh really.. good to know that !!
yep thats why linkscape is awesome... now we just need MORE! muahaha bigger index... more data... better correlation and linkgraph data. linkscape will take position 3 from yahoo
Maybe SEOmoz would be kind enought to offer an API (hint hint)? I'm sure you could make money on that...
you might want to check this out:
I agree in particular with point 1. I can't believe this real time thing is stealing traffic from legitiame content sites that should be listed BEFORE those messages. I'm also sure that they'll figure out how to extract relevant queries from the real time noise and implement it in a better way. I've read somewhere an interesting article about "real time spam" but actually i can't remember the source :P
Hi @Marco - I read this yesterday on David Naylor from Paul Carpenter, re gaming the realtime. Was this the one you meant? https://www.davidnaylor.co.uk/google-real-time-search.html
Hey Nichola, after your interest i searched in my google reader and i found the article. Rae Hoffman wrote a great article on how Google enables real time spam Hope you like it :)
That was a great article, if not a bit scary!
We will just adapt and continue optimizing :) That's the interesting thing in working as SEO specialist - every day there is something new.
Yeah, as seo we have to changing every time to follow the se's!
So much is changing/evolving in SEO. It blows my mind but have to keep up to stay competitive.
With search engines fighting for market share and twitter with its tweets and retweets and rereretweets...the amount of content duplication is becoming huge across the web...!
I think SEs (most importantly google) will start relying less on inlinks and more of unique content...and also (though not easy to do) try and build a logic for the source of that content. Original content...first emerging on the net...will start gaining precedence...than simply sites replicating that content but with great inlinks!
Link Building will (or maybe I am hoping should) go back to how it was meant to be...organically...logically...and not bought or sold or forced!
As an in-house, jack of all trades (SEO, e-mail, PPC, etc) e-marketer, all I can say is "Seven, Seven, two, seven, two-two-seven, seven, seven, SEVEN!"
Traffic generation feels like it's under control on many fronts, but qualifiying visitors and converting them will get the most labor attention next year.
#8 | I think Bing is doing this better than Google. Search "nikon d200 review" on Bing and take a look. You should see:
Popular features89%Ease Of Use86%Affordability89%Speed90%Construction98%Photo Quality100%ErgonomicsExtremely useful to someone looking to buy a particular camera and doing research.
Rand, why are you so damn smart?!
...because he is actually a Google Labs experiment?!
;)
Will miss siteexplorer if this happens, I am almost expecting it to disapear any day!
And yes: I do believe SEO will see growth in 2010, So many companies have now had proven success with paid search and I hear many asking what can we get from SEO!
Ludvik
Losing Site Explorer will be a shame
One thing Rand didn't touch on though has in the past (and so has Aaron) is the growing effect of ranking positions being pushed downdue to one box and shopping.
I had someone I am helping questioning why his keyword ranking reports were suggesting he dropped from #1/#2 to #6/#7 after a server move.
A quick glance at the SERPs told the story, 5 shopping results now pushed to the top on his primary terms and eating into traffic and sales.
The biggest problem for me with the Twitter updates taking over my ego searches is that I can't track that traffic.
Twitter had better hurry up and allow me to add Analytics to my profile.
I agree Andy, Google seems to be suppressing the organic results. Aaron's example also showed Google displaying local ads above the local listings.
Google will continue to try and drive more users to their ads and make it harder for SEOs to manipulate organic rankings. Organic rankings may end up below the fold on the majority of SERPs.
On the real-time results - displaying tweets for the "seomoz" search query above the moz home url is a complete joke.
Whilst I understand and agree that Google may manipluate the organic search listing, human behaviour will prevail.
It won't take long for people to realise that they are clicking on advertisements and scroll down to the organic listings.
So, I think SEO will continue to grow with new people seeking to improve their rankings rather than using PPC.
However, there is market eduation required.
I agree
As an hourly searcher , I subconciously look for organic sites because I trust Google's judgment on the contnet that ranks high, but for some odd reason i dont trust their adds with the same confidence.
I agree
As an hourly searcher , I subconciously look for organic sites because I trust Google's judgment on the contnet that ranks high, but for some odd reason i dont trust their adds with the same confidence.
I curius what by the end of 2010 became true.
Rand, or anyone else, with the merger of MSN/Yahoo! and subsequent loss of SE, has anyone heard if the Yahoo Directory will change? Will MSN keep this running?
Cheers,
Liam
The post spoke about site explorer but not the Yahoo directory. You've got to remember that a lot of what Rand is saying is, though backed up by different sources, still a bit of speculation.
I predict - and this is a massive prediction - that Yahoo! Directory is something that will never become useless. As far as I know, it's still up there with DMOZ and I'm sure it generates a substantial amount of money for Yahoo!
Your articles are always fantastic, Rand!!!
I completely agree with you about your predictions. I even spoke about the real-time search in a comment on another article on this site. I said exactly what you're saying in this post.
One thing I expect to see a lot more of in the coming year is Bing. It's a search engine that I begin to a appreciate more and more every day, both because of their features and the great user interface. I know that Google is still the big boy around them there parts, but I've got a lot of faith in ... BUH - DING BING.
I'm work for a small business so real-time search hasn't yet showed up on searches for our keywords. But from what I've seen and read I'm not "wowed" over Google's realtime search.
Don't get me wrong if real-time search ever makes it to the small business will be in good shape.
I can't help but get a kick out of referring to the Charger's next "match". They've looked good on the "pitch" all year!
Soccer is taking over the Americans' vernacular!
Another prediction: Google will hire Rand so he can stop spoiling the new stuff they are going to launch :)
Agree with nr 6
Visited a small customer yesterday and we have had some problems trying to convince them to use more money on adwords every day than they use on cofee.
But yesterday managing director said "For 2010 we shall be on SERP top 2 for these 10 keywords. Can you star right away"
I said I had to finnish a SEO project, but I shal look in to it on monday.
He said "Deal"
For some reason I can't access Bing Webmaster Tools. It takes me through a loop in Firefox and IE and gives me a random error in Chrome. Hmmm.
I agree with the Real-Time results - this feature needs to be developed a lot and think Google were a bit giddy to release it so quickly. It also makes it harder for SEOers who have been working a while trying to improve their organic rankings only to be beaten by someone making a useless comment within Twitter.
I'm in the same loop. Hail to Microsoft and bad usability!
#3 if personal search becomes dependant on clickthroughs this could be a Reputation Management nightmare. Especially if up to 70% of people will click on a negative result first in the SEPs if it is directly below a companies website.
what joy...
conversion-rate-experts.com claims seomoz.org is one of their customers. Is this true? Did seomoz really need them to increase its conversion rate? Do they know something magical?
Yes, we are one of their customers. They helped us increase conversions by quite a bit (can't find the number right now). We've mentioned this several times on the blog actually, here's one of them.
Very interesting post and I relate to a lot of the things happening...
Yahoo Site Explorer will definitely be missed, I'm sure you guys at SEOmoz will be rubbing your hands with glee cos that means more customers for linkscape!!
As for the PPC playing a part in the personalized search I think that would be highly unfair and spammers would have a field's day with that but it is definitely something for more research.
All in all, its just so crazily annoying (in a nice way though)! I just starting SEO full time like 4 months ago, was starting to settle into the swing of things then BAM!! change is on its way again! I guess truly there's never a dull moment with SEO!!
Long live SEO!!!!
Don't despair Tola. As my Swedish/Hungarian/Filipino imaginary friend would always say, (and I quote): "You know what SEO stands for don't you? Skiftande Egész Oras".
Which roughly translates to "Changing all the time" :)
Good luck with your new career.
PS - Man oh man can Google translate suck up your time!
Great article Rand. It will be interesting to revisit this time next year to see how accurate your predictions are.
I have a feeling that site performance (page load speed) is going to become a more heavily weighted metric used by Google (if it isn't already).
I think it should be as it impacts on the user experience greatly.
Why do you think Yahoo Site Explorer will go away? I was surprised that there wasn't a link to go along with that. Can you provide one? I'd love to know more.
I'm very agree with the predictions. Thank you very much.
"The fish doesn't think because the fish knows everything".
Okay... time to re-learn SEO for us all, I guess... There are new things to learn in a hurry.
2010 seems to be like it's going to be awesome. Future awaits.
It's ok to put links to something that could be useful to read... but you don't seem that SEOed with yours:
Error 404 - Not FoundThat's the right one for who want to visit and read it.
Who would have thought Google Instant would come along and kill seo! lol
Good predictions. My thoughts: #1 social media is great, no doubt. But what about “quality results” as you mention?#2 using links in every twiit? I don’t think so.#3 complete agrees.#4 this is something we have been dealing since many years ago.#5 really? I didn’t know.#6 the best of the all predictions :P#7 good point! Isn’t all about be ranked. #8 No doubt. TOP10 won’t be enough these days.
I was just starting to get the hang of this SEO thing, and now it's all changing. Crap!