2010 an ever evolving online world
As the year draws to an end we’ve already looked at what online trends we expect in 2010 but in the online world things are constantly changing so we’ll keep adding to the original post.
We’ve already dealt with
real time search and how this will be a growing area as well as the departure of Yahoo! and the emergence of a two way split between Google and Bing. SEO spending is also expected to rise in 2010 as competition for prime position intensifies.
Mobile Search to Grow
The other areas which we anticipate will grow is mobile search as more and more people start using web friendly mobile phones. Firefox are now just days away from rolling out their mobile browser Fennec. Add to this the growing sales of iPhones and Android mobiles and site owners will continue to or should look to develop mobile friendly sites.
Convergence of real time and social networks
2010 is also a year of “convergence” where existing search engines will try to seamlessly merge real time search with social network feeds, we are already seeing this through Google real time search and Bing is also planning on hotting up real time search.
Online Reputation Management
Some SEOs are concerned about the online reputation aspects of real time search for brands – can a “Latest Results” result be detrimental to a brand if there is negative sentiment attached? My gut feeling is that the live Twitter updates we are already seeing are only very momentary and fleeting.
However, the power of social media is such that if a brand conversation goes truly viral then these Latest Results could dominate results and draw searchers. An extreme scenario could be a well-known soft drinks manufacturer being instrumental in financially supporting a despotic government at a time of huge pro-democracy Twitter conversations. This is an extreme scenario, it could happen and should it happen then real time search results could sink a brand.
Online reputation management services will proliferate in 2010 to cater for any brand failures.
Google Backlash
While the search engine market share split is currently at 80/20 in favour of Google over Bing, I think that Bing will steadily chip away at Google. I’d personally welcome this as the more competition the better the results will develop over time. Google’s dominance, bordering on monopolistic, may also be subject of a backlash as privacy issues will hot up – Google is already personalising search results based on a user’s search history and their domination of search may (or already does) ruffle both individuals, companies and possibly even governments.
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