Okay folks everyone has an opinion - what in your own opinions do you see happening in our industry this coming year. Could make for some lively conversation.

Will Google keep growing market share?

Will Yahoo be bought?

Any new widgets in the near future... new methods of marketing?

What gets hot in 2009?

Hope Google stop updating page rank each and every month, PR still holds a value and would like to see SEO efforts at every three months rather than every month.

So this is something you would like to see happen... have any ideas of things you see happening

I see a lot more browsing and shopping done from iPhones and other mobile devices with full Internet browsers.

definitely see use of mobile getting a big push this year

IE has some serious security issues, because of this people moving towards Google chrome and FF3...

Will Yahoo be bought?
Nah, I think they really missed the boat on this. Even with the share price now down around 12 bucks, the market cap is still $17 billion; with no financing out there it would seem that only somebody with buckets of cash could pull it off -- and MSFT says it's out of it.

Hope Google stop updating page rank each and every month, PR still holds a value and would like to see SEO efforts at every three months rather than every month.

right now r they updating once a month?

right now r they updating once a month?

No, major toolbar PR updates are still at about four times per year. Though lately some folks have reported intermittent data dumps, these appear to be not at all widespread one-off anomalies, maybe to address specific situations.

Google will continue to climb. Yahoo won't sell. Facebook will get hotter. Twitter will make money, probably going up for bid.

Interesting thoughts Dan - think Yahoo sells some part of itself if not all

Somebody will sue yahoo for changing their keywords :)

yeah that has been tried - and the reason for the email to the users with warnings

Google is planning to launch Mobile search marketing which will open new doors of SEO marketing.

There are more mobiles in this world as compared to the computers therefore mobile search marketing can become popular in 2009-2010.

They have had adwords for mobile for some time http://services.google.com/adwords/mobile_ads

Interesting thoughts Dan - think Yahoo sells some part of itself if not all

We'll have to wait and see... :) There seems to be heated discussions for selling/acquiring and not. But yeah, it looks like the majority are betting on them selling...

am personally vested plus talked sister into getting on board - guess kids are going to state colleges

I think what is going to get hot in 2009 is people's tempers....

The barrier to entry in the big 5 was reduced to the big 3 Google, Yahoo, MSN... and now they are tightening the belts and spinning up the money machines. They are done with the big changes and now are focusing on what can be tweaked to make the most without causing the public to either jump ship or cancel advertising, yet still saves face if need be.

I think we are going to see everything become easier for the laymen and increasingly difficult for the seasoned vet. The pie that was so easy to control will be lowered into the hands of the newbs and the common majority through growing tools offered by each entity as well as more support from real people offering to "do the work for them".

I think all of the combined changes will mean that everyone is going to have to sharpen their pencils and really boil their efforts down to the nitty gritty. This will typically mean less spending as a percentage, but since the doors are opening up wider to the public, the market will grow, showing a total growth in the industry.

I see more work to maintain my same levels of productivity as I have to fight the same tedious battles over again, against each newcomer-competitor as they learn what is and is not effective in our combined space.

Will Google keep growing market share?

Will Yahoo be bought?

Any new widgets in the near future... new methods of marketing?

What gets hot in 2009?

Google will move even more into applications than it was in 2008. So far this year they've offered their apps to be reskinned by resellers. Chrome 2 will be more feature rich. The Google OS will emerge out of Chrome. You'll start seeing Google push Chrome very hard - I wouldn't be surprised to start seeing them advertising it.

Yes Yahoo! will! be! bought! I'm sure the Google competitors will want to consolidate on their position - so they'll start snapping up AOL, Yahoo! or anyone else that they can buy. I've been surprised that Amazon haven't got involved in this area - they have the data centres, and Marketplace is going from strength to strength - just imagine if they owned a Search Engine outside of Amazon as well.

Widgets - I expect the Facebook connect to take off big style. But that problem will mean that Facebook 'own' all your customer details. And just wait for some data issue or hacking incident before it all collapses.

I think we'll see enormous rationalisation due to the World financial crisis. eBay's traffic is heading downwards. So are many of the non-Google Search Engines. The companies with the cash will see the current crisis as a great way to buy old competitors at a discount price. Q. What will be hot? A. AmericaAmazonBayOnLine!

I bet google will lop off some of its older labs work to make room and to focus on the low hanging fruit!

Oh wait, this just in.....

Hello,

Our records indicate that at some point you have submitted your catalogs to Google for digitization and display, and we wanted to let you know about an important development to the Google Catalog Search product.

After a long run as one of our first digitization efforts, we're saying goodbye to Google Catalog Search -- effective tomorrow, http://catalogs.google.com will no longer be accessible. We designed Catalog Search to help merchants bring their catalogs and products online, and to help Google users to find them. We hope to continue helping merchants and users use our technology to make buying and selling products on the Internet a better, easier experience, and as a merchant, you still have a number of great options to display and sell your products through Google: Google Checkout, Google Product Search and Google Base, which lets you upload your products quickly and easily so people can find them when they search Google (http://www.google.com/base).

Thanks for participating in this initiative, and for helping to build up Google Catalog Search. We do ask that you stop any future shipments to Google of catalogs for digitization. Any catalogs we receive will not be scanned, and will be recycled.

You can read the official blog post regarding Google Catalogs at: http://booksearch.blogspot.com/2009/01/farewell-google-catalog-search.html

If you have any additional questions about this change, please feel free to email us at catalog-support@google.com.

Sincerely,
The Google Team

Maybe someone piped up and said, "How are we making money from this again?"

I can see more people losing faith in CPC. Anyone else find it more difficult to convince potential clients to do it? I never thought SEO would be an easier sell, but i'm starting to think that soon that will be the case.

I'm going to lay it on the line here with my predictions and say that, to compensate for the decrease in CPC, Google will bring out a new qualification. Adwords Advertising Proffesional GOLD, or something. A nice Gold logo for all advertisers to pay ~ $150 for.

Kenny

p.s I think 2009 will see me becoming more cynical.

Google is already lopping off some of their unprofitable product lines: Catalog, Dodgeball, etc. It's time for Yahoo to go through "everything.yahoo.com" and decide what's not going to make money. That's very likely with the change in management.

I don't expect Yahoo to merge or disappear. They're profitable, and have a P/E of about 15, which is just fine. They're in far better shape than any of the big banks or car companies. With Carol Barth in charge, they'll probably finish 2009 more profitable than in 2008.

Advertisers are realizing that AdSense is a marginal way to get sales. Ads on search result pages are valuable because they're shown at the moment a user is looking for something. Ads on other pages are distractions. With last year's discovery that 50% of clicks come from 10% of web users, and those 10% don't buy much, advertiser pressure on Google to do something about that will increase. Advertisers will demand more control over where ads appear. Or they may just opt out of the Google Content Network entirely.

The squeeze on ad-supported sites will increase. Click arbitrage will become unprofitable.

With the Obama administration in charge, the Federal Trade Commission will have some teeth again. Expect crackdowns on deceptive advertising, broadly defined. More scammers will be going to jail.

We'll probably see a shakeout at the bottom of search. Expect Cuil, Rushmore Drive, and Ask to disappear. Some of the middlemen, like Marchex, might go, too.

interesting perspective sitetruth but don't have as much faith in Bartz she is not search or even portal person - Autodesk is tech/IT area

interesting perspective sitetruth but don't have as much faith in Bartz she is not search or even portal person - Autodesk is tech/IT area

I don't know Bartz personally, but I know people who do, and they consider her quite competent, even though they disagreed strongly with some of her decisions. She will probably make some people at Yahoo seriously annoyed, but that may be for the good.

Autodesk under Bartz rolled up the entire animation industry. When she came in, Autodesk mostly did CAD. Softimage dominated that industry, and Autodesk was barely a player. Autodesk was criticized for not being "cool enough" for the animation industry. Now, Autodesk owns all the major animation packages - Discreet, Maya, 3DS, even the remains of Softimage, which they bought a few months ago.

(I was a major Autodesk stockholder at one time, and still own some stock.)

lol... see I am a Yahoo stockholder - so am in reverse position - hey if she turns things around I will sing her praises from every conference I go to