Time to Rate Last Years Search Engine Predictions

As predicted, search engine optimizers have had to embrace this trend towards Pay for Performance and integrate it within their traditional site optimization services in order to offer clients balanced, measurable and successful search engine marketing campaigns. As a result, the term SEO has become increasingly eroded by the more logical term SEM (Search Engine Marketer).

Score: Nostradamus

2. Increase in Paid Submissions

My original article predicted: “I believe we’ll see other engines and directories introduce a fee for submission to their commercial categories. I think Google could be the first of these”.

While the fairly new JoeAnt and GoGuides directories both introduced paid submission services late in 2002, they don’t really counteract the fact that LookSmart dropped their directory submission option in favor of PPC and (thankfully), Google have refrained from introducing a Paid Submission service. So much for THAT prediction!

Score: NoSuchLuckus

3. Crackdown on Spammers

My prediction here was: “With engines like Google leading the way in the crackdown on search engine spammers, other engines should follow suit in 2002. As a result, there should be far less spammers and more relevant results across the search engines by this time next year”.

Other search engines have indeed followed Google’s lead against spam in 2002, by introducing more sophisticated search algorithms, (such as AltaVista’s revamped algorithm consisting of 100+ ranking determining factors), by incorporating more spam filtration methods (such as those capable of detecting invisible text and hidden links), by providing spam reporting facilities and by boosting site relevancy factors such as link popularity when measuring sites against search queries.

Google still leads the War Against Spam, with their dreaded PageRank site penalty scheme and their crystal clear anti-spam stance publicized via their Webmaster Guidelines. The result has been a victory for searchers – more relevant searches, less bacon and ham. Even those search engines and directories renowned for providing irrelevant results recognized what Google had known for years: the need to keep searchers satisfied. Yahoo in particular got back to basics by the end of 2002, partnering with Google to combine Google search results with their own directory listings instead of serving them up separately.

Score: Nostradamus

4. Growth of the SEO Industry

Back then I said: “With the importance of search engines finally sinking in, the need for quality SEO services is booming in the U.S. and the U.K. I predict this solid demand will continue in 2002, especially in newly developing markets such as Australia/New Zealand and Europe”.

No longer a niche market, SEO/SEM has indeed become mainstream over the past 12 months and is now recognized as a vital part of the marketing mix in both the U.S. and the U.K. Thankfully, search engine marketing has also become increasingly in demand in European, Asian and Australasian markets with scores of new specialist SEM firms springing up regularly and more media coverage than ever before.

Score: Nostradamus

5. Death of Two Majors

My prediction here read: “I think 2002 will signal the demise for at least two of the major search engines and directories”.

In 2002 we said goodbye to industry veterans Excite and Northern Light. Excite ceased to be a major player in January 2002, when new owners InfoSpace replaced Excite’s search database listings with a mixture of Overture paid results and Inktomi search results. Excite UK shut their doors around the same time. These days the Excite portal still exists, but nobody searches there anymore. Perhaps it’s because Excite now uses a mixture of regular and PPC listings from Google, LookSmart, Inktomi, Ask Jeeves, About, Overture, FindWhat and FAST, with no disclaimers to help searchers identify which are paid results.

In January 2002, Northern Light closed its public search service. A week later, Divine, inc., a provider of content management and delivery solutions for enterprise customers, bought the search site. In a separate deal at the same time, Yahoo partnered with Divine to make Northern Light's Special Collection documents available in a new service called Yahoo Premium Documents Search.