It's nearing the end of the year, so why not give a shot at playing fortune teller - here are some predictions for what will be up (and down) next year:
- A great number of old-media sites will integrate social, "Web 2.0" features into their online properties. We'll see a few copies of Digg, a few MySpace-like clones, a couple del.icio.us' and plenty of maps mash-ups
- Google's market share will rise in search and Ask's will, too (only slightly). Yahoo! and MSN will stay flat or slightly decline (allthough Yahoo!'s a pretty darn good engine at this point).
- Yahoo! will continue to have success with content projects; their news, finance, sports, entertainment and new projects in Food, TV and Answers will bring them a greater share of the web audience as a whole.
- MySpace will start an inexorable decline, possibly late in the year, into the forgotten world of Xanga & Friendster. That's the problem with relying on 12-22 year olds for the majority of your page views; they have a short attention span.
- LinkedIn is going to continue to have success, as will Last.fm, Zillow, Flickr & YouTube - those Web 2.0 properties that have a unique niche and audience are going to thrive while a lot of minor entrants play second fiddle.
- Wikipedia's credibility is going to suffer; as a source of truthiness, it's great, but the pranksters, spammers and agenda-based edits will eventually make enough of a dent that on any given article, the chances of accuract will be low enough (80-90%) to make it unacceptable as a research tool.
- In the SEO world, the practice of viral media generation and marketing (aka the good kind of linkbait) will continue to spread in the world of high-profile SEO firms, but remain very rare among smaller, local firms.
- Cloaking (the good kind) will grow as more and more websites using AJAX, personalization and geo-targeting find that they can't serve Google the same content they deliver their visitors.
- Comment spam is going to remain at its current levels - most of the people who will adopt nofollow (ever) already have and the remainder are still providing enough value to blog spammers to make it worthwhile to continue operations.
- Windows Vista won't fix email spam... In fact, it will still be a problem in 2010.
- Yahoo! and MSN will get their own versions of Webmaster Central/Sitemaps. This will be a very, very good decision.
- Social media marketing is going to rise in prominence and value as a link building tactic.
- Blogging will start to slide in popularity, though possibly not until 2008 or 2009. People won't stop reading them entirely, but other publishing platform styles will take a chunk of the audience and the writers.
- Microsoft won't acquire Yahoo! (I'm not saying it's not a good move, I'm just saying it won't happen).
- Buying links is going to remain an effective way for websites to rank for low and mid-level competition phrases.
Disagree? Have some of your own?
Microsoft should aquire a sports team and change the mascot to that annoying paperclip. That would bring some humor to the 2K7.
I've been lobbying to get a BCS game in Seattle. Call it the Microsoft Gigabowl.
What about seomoz in 2007? How do middle-level american SEO firms feel about takeovers, or fusions with larger marketing firms? Is it something you could see in a good light?
I cannot speak for Rand and SEOmoz, but I think that takeovers and mergers will begin with the larger firms and work their way down to smaller firms.
Larger established firms have business cultures that are separate from personal life. This makes it easier for management to make major changes or part ways. Also, larger firms tend to make bigger more visible targets.
In smaller firms and especially one-person shops the person is the business and the business is one's life. Many will cling to their independent spirit and not merge or sell. Those that can will innovate and evolve the field. Others will survive because they have built themselves a good reputation and network and know how to nurture it. Unfortunately, many who might want to cash-out will not be able to because they have no transferable properties beyond themselves as a highly skilled employee.
That leaves the middle-sized firms. I think this is where you will see much merging, especially in cluster communities like Seattle. Anyone who has grown their business from start-up to a mid-size will have already experienced several major changes, therefore leaders will be more open to mergers and acquisitions. Seasoned leaders will recognize, in a maturing industry where well-moneyed players are acquiring positions, that size can matter and will respond accordingly.
The industry is changing and there is no going back. If SEOmoz were to get the independent spirit in a mid-sized firm award, Visible Technologies would get the collaboration award for their strategic partnership with WPP. The Cobalt Group has turned search into a major product and is simultaneously transforming its image from a double-niched tech firm (websites for auto dealers) to a more rounded marketing firm serving the entire automotive industry. And that’s just naming three companies in one city.
SEOmoz... we've got some plans, but they involve remaining independent. I'll probably make a post about our plans before the end of the year (possibly after Xmas).
Are you crazy?! Don't tell them about the lasers! They'll try to stop us!
Mwah-ha-ha!
Within just a couple of years most of the links on the web will not be worth a damn (we might be getting close already.. lol). Instead of using links, search engines will rank your pages on the basis of deep content analysis and the actions of users who enter your site. When this happens SEOs will be working for the usability people and the great content writers will be worth their weight in gold.
I do not know how much Google will rely on user data in the future. It could be everything or it could be little to nothing.
However, I just registered the name www.ProfileBrokers.com, just in case user data does become a main ingredient. And by "just", I literally mean 10 minutes ago :)
At ProfileBrokers.com we will specialize in buying and selling user profiles. You can buy well-established, authoritative, user accounts by the thousands. :)
All of our profiles are tested in order to insure quality....
As an add-on service, we will provide intelligent programs that will simulate the actions of "real" users. Our "Real Human" emulators are created after thousands of hours of research into human behavior.
And if you act today, we will throw in access to our 100,000 I.P. randomizing proxy, which is constantly updated with "Clean" I.P.'s so that our intelligent "Real Human" emulators will remain effective.
Some of the uses of our "High Quality Profiles" include:
- Top Search Engine Rankings - Front Page Listings on all the Top Social Portals - All the Money and Riches You Could Ever Desire!
Sorry, I got on a roll and decided to go with it. That usually happens at 1:30 in the morning :)
(This information is for educational purposes only. It is fiction, and in no way do I condone utilizing any technique to game the Search Engines or Social Networks) No seriously :)
Genius work, Jarrod. Now I have to write a blog post at 1:40am... This should be good.
Sounds like you are going to rule this space, Jarrod.
I think that there is a market for this type of info on a single site. Such as categorizing incoming visitors according to their entry KW, referer, etc. and then serving them content, products, ads that were successful with similar entries in the past. I am sure that some websites are doing this right now but the technology is beyond the reach of just about everybody - but the company who can master this and offer the service widely for a percent of the take could make a lot of dough.
I agree that being able to write compelling material FOR HUMANS will become a very sought-after skill. People like Brian Clark will rule the world. I said this in 2005 and I'll repeat it again - in the future, the only thing that will matter will be talent (since old school king-makers like distribution control or syndication power will be democratized in almost every industry).
Agreed. A blog can only be as interesting as what's actually on it. And in the end, a good, informative, well written piece of copy will win over spam.
IMHO, I think we will start to see more of a focus on mobile search along with an increased fight for ondeck marketshare with the major service providers.
Success will be geared more toward page views versus actual conversions in a mobile environment.
Blogging loosing potential? What will take it's place? I beg to differ. Everyday I introduce people to blogging and they love it. I stopped watching TV and now read blogs (or watch video/picture blogs) instead. Even if the platform changes, the basic principle of someone updating a site on a regular basis is the future of the 'net and will never die.
My prediction: Video game consoles like the PS3 help integrate internet/TV far quicker than any computer company could ever hope to. Apple will try to enter this market as it unfolds, but the PS3 wins out by the end of the year. Oh, and Sony reveals it's new brand, "Skynet". And we all know what that means...
Evolvor - agreed about the regular updated sites will remain popular. I meant that the most popular format for this type of material will shift in some way over the next few years, and that introduction to it should be soon.
I predict that in April 2010 Google will throw a spanner in the works and make headaches for webmasters ... Uncanny, I was right ;-)
Wow, just read this in December 09 and your predictions were pretty much all dead on!
Rand,
What about the fall of SEW?
Can Danny turn SEL and SMX into the web 2.0 of online marketing?
★ It would be really fascinating to get a consensus on what new labs betas will be released by Google.
And what new Web 2.0 Acquisitions will be made by Google and Yahoo ★
SEO/SEM/SMO will complete its exit from the early adopter stage and become a mature industry. My prediction for 2007 is that that we will begin seeing SEO/SEM/SMO businesses
1) Being acquired by traditional marketing agencies,
2) Merging to consolidate enough strength to compete with established traditional marketing agencies, and
3) Evolving beyond SEO/SEM/SMO to become the newest generation of advertising and public relations powerhouses.
#1 will begin in the first or second quarter of 2007.
#2 will happen in the third or fourth quarter.
#3 will begin in the fourth quarter or in 2008 and will become more apparent over the following two or three years.
For more on this read my comment to Ian Laurie’s post at Conversation Marketing.
In 2006 I canceled my cable TV service. I mostly used it to watch the news. Since I spend so much time on the computer, I found myself getting 100% of my news from the Internet. I’d rather hit a local theater to see a movie than to stay home and watch one on TV. What does 2007 hold for cable TV and movie theaters? Up or down? I’m going to say down with cable and up with theaters.
Great, now movie theaters can charge $15 a ticket. Thanks a lot!
Well, if you include popcorn, a coke and a sour patch candy, you are at least at 50$ / couple at the theater...
WHAT A BARGAIN :D
Ummmm...they don't charge $15 where you live? In D.C./MD it is darn close to that...2 Adults and 2 kids at the movies requires a lien on your mortgage, your first born, and your choice of either an arm or a leg....(never both).
The only way movie theatres are going to remain viable is to continue to upgrade projection, sound and comfort/luxury in a constant effort to provide an experience inimitable by the ever growing home theatre market.
Unfortunately, all of this investment, combined with dwindling ticket sales means high ticket prices. The popular, high-tech, super-luxe theatres in many cities already charge $15-20 per ticket.
Cable/Satellite will continue to grow especially as they expand into interactive television applications. This is already a rapidly growing market segment in Europe and US programmers finally seem ready to break the mold and work in this new content space. There are a few companies, such as Ensequence, who have technology available to allow seamless integration and broadcast of interactive content to any and all modern set-top boxes.
I hope Microsoft doesn't buy Yahoo! I am happy the way it is.
Any idea what other types of publishing platforms will rise up? I can't imaging blogging fading away, it's just to darn easy for people to setup a web prescence.
I am sure Rand is talking about the new SEOmoz.org (again) which will take blogging and community to a whole new level and which others will immediately copy to create a whole new generation of socially oriented websites.
Here in Australia News.com.au already add digg and newsvine and delicious links to their top stories. They are quite onto the bandwagon which I found a little surprising.
I caught those links at the bottom of a story up here in Queensland yesterday.
It caught me by surprise too - it was the last thing I expected to see at the bottom of bottom of a page on the Courier Mail website.
but bill promised!
https://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3426367.s...
I think Yahoo is going to gain more popularity with their other services, but their search is anything but relevant. After searching for about 5 minutes, the only remotely relevant results that I can find are related to SEO. The top 10 are littered with bad forum posts, multiple pages from the same sites, made-for-adsense sites and every other useless ranking content that I can think of. Yahoo ranks their own pages at the top not because they are better, but because they are theirs. I was surprised to see that you thought Yahoo is 'pretty damn good'.
Some newspaper will pull their head out of the sand and discover they have a strong position in driving local internet traffic and the ability to be relevant in a web 2.0 world instead of just moving subscribers to online versions of their content.
Google will drop DMOZ as it's directory and switch to BOTW.
Graywolf starts a Scientology like cult as part of his Hoax Marketing initiatives which earns him way more money than SEO as well as tax free status.
Shoemoney gets a contract with Marvel Comics as a superhero. Jeremy makes millions on Shoemoney action figures, Underoos and other merchandising.
And Dave Naylor will mend his ways and don a white hat.
Hopefully, LinkedIn realizes that they have a head start on a great idea and they make their site more userfriendly.
Yahoo! will position itself in 2007 for a great 2008.
Apple will do something that make people say wow.
Microsoft won't acquire Yahoo!, but bloggers will continue to sensationalize their headlines in an attempt to fund terroris..err, attract readers.