Search engine predictions
- Jun. 6, 2003
Usually every year, around Christmas we start to make predictions on search engines for the coming year. While this is usually a fun task, it's often difficult to see what will happen, especially in a years time where search engines are concerned. I thought I'd take an article to describe what I think will happen, or what may happen if other events occur.
As I'm sure you are already well aware, Google changed their algorithms again. This was no surprise to us; we knew it was going to happen. It was just a matter of when and what they'd target. This time it appears that they are going after spam and hidden text. People are panicking and predicting the end of Google. So my first prediction is: Give Google 2 or 3 months and you will see the results level out.
It appears as if they are applying different algorithm results to the SERPs. For example, the recent crawl indexed new content but it doesn't have a PageRank value. In fact, as of the recent crawl nothing after January 20th on our site has a PageRank. A marketing monitor article written on January 20th has a PageRank of 4, but one written on January 21st has a PageRank of 0. Everything since then also has a 0 value. This leads me to believe that while they did clean up the back links, they still aren't accounting for all the links in the final ranking. In fact, we've added 95 articles (including this one) since January 21st. All with links back to the index page, and all have links from a main articles page (http://www.searchengineposition.com/info/articles_archive.asp) and each other. Yet these pages don't seem to be getting credit from the PageRank they should be inheriting from each other and the index. Hence the reason I think that in the next 2 to 3 months the new links will be counted and rankings will be adjusted.
Yahoo!
There is no real fortune telling here: Yahoo! will dump Google in favor of its own Inktomi results, it's just a matter of when. My feeling is that it will be in the next 6 months. And there won't be any advanced notice. We will all go home Friday and come to work Monday to find that they've made the change.
They have already been making changes to their search features, so I see this as a precursor to dumping Google; it's just a matter of when.
Overture/Altavista/Alltheweb
While we all know that Overture bought the other 2 engines, it remains to be seen what the end result will be. It's safe to assume that Overture will offer a full search service to its customers and partners. In fact they've already said that is what they will do. Plus they will develop the crawler from either Altavista or Alltheweb to crawl pages and offer content based, targeting PPC ads. My feeling is they must get this out by the end of the year or risk losing customers to Google, who already offers these services. They also have another potential competitor looming on the horizon:
MSN
MSN as we already know has stated that they will enter the search market and have there eyes set on Google. We also already know they are testing a spider. So the next question is when? Again, I think if they wish to have a product that not only they can use, but they can sell, they need to develop it fast and get it out of the gate before Overture. This is an ambitious project, however, as they are building it from scratch where Overture bought the technology.
I predict we will see some form of public beta testing on an MSN index in the next 6 months, with a full launch also by the end of the year. You will probably see a case where every nth search is performed on the new MSN directory, with the rest defaulting to the current Inktomi database. Like many Microsoft products, version 1 will be buggy J, but version 2 and higher will be much more polished and refined. I could see version 2 or 3 by mid next year being a very legitimate alternative to Google. Whether it's a free or paid model remains to be seen, but my money is on some form of paid inclusion by version 2 with a form of PPC coming in later versions. The beta version will include sites they've determined they will include in the index for free, for testing purposes.
Others
Other engines, like AskJeeves/Teoma and Looksmart/Wisenut also have very good technology. Therefore they will either continue to develop their searches, or will be bought by someone else, or merge together. Remember that both Yahoo! and MSN have the money necessary to buy either of these providers if the need arose. Looksmart has a very good crawler in Wisenut, and also offers PPC. Therefore anyone who wants to get into the search market in a hurry need only come up with a few hundred million dollars to enter the market.
It is also conceivable that these two will merge in the next 12 to 18 months if one is not bought by another competitor. We did bring you news a short time ago that AskJeeves could be shopping, so it is likely that Looksmart/Wisenut is their target. Both Teoma and Wisenut have similar crawling technology, so it wouldn't be as difficult to integrate them into a combined package.
Rob Sullivan
Production Supervisor
Searchengineposition.com
Search Engine Positioning
Specialists
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