Marketing & SEO Discussion List - LED Digest

By popular request, I'm back with 10 predictions for the forthcoming year and a look back at how well I fared for last year. Because of a mix-up, my 2005 predictions never actually made it into LED (though they were written in December 2004) so you will be seeing them for the first time. Two for the price of none, so to speak.

 

For the unitiated, I have run 10 predictions in LED each year since 1999 (excepting the 2005 hiccup mentioned above), with choppy but better-than-even results. Specifically, in 2004 I got it 77% right, 65% in 2003, 85% in 2002 (a great year), 67% in 2001, 80% in 2000 and a poor 63.5% for the inaugural 1999 predictions.

 

Without further ado, let's see how well I read the 2005 tealeaves...

REVIEW OF PREDICTIONS FOR 2005 

1). Spyware, identity theft, viruses and phishing will continue to dominate the headlines, to the point that a *real* dip can be seen in Internet user numbers in the US by year-end, by virtue of people being simply too frightened to log on regularly.

 

- This dip manifested itself during the summer, according to some statistics. Certainly, there has been greater *awareness* of such dangers, though it's arguable whether things have become worse in practice.

 

ACCURACY: 8/10

 

2). Domain names were on the ascendant in 2004, but in 2005 they'll have a truly blowout year. Many major portfolio owners will follow in UltSearch's footsteps (look up "Marchex" if you're not sure what I'm talking about) and cash their chips out of the market.

 

- You only have to check the sales pages of DNJournal.com to see that domains had their best year *ever* last year. While no sales beat the Business.com record, the overall market was incredibly strong and showed every sign of gaining traction as the year wore on, and widespread coverage of the domain phenomenon in the media around year-end.

 

ACCURACY: 10/10

 

3). Local search will gain in importance and accuracy, though the main search engines (unlike the yellow page services) will continue to flail around from lack of warm bodies on the ground closing sales (geolocation technology will never slice the local pie accurately enough to substitute for a local friendly face).

 

- Google Maps, Microsoft Live Local, Yahoo! Local and A9's valiant attempt to put a photo to every business in the US were just some of the plays making ripples in the Local space. A meme whose time has come.

 

ACCURACY: 9/10

 

4). Broadband wireless will make significant inroads in many of the largest Internet territories.

 

- Ahem. There have been a lot of trials and a few successes, but high-speed wireless still remains by-and-large an elusive animal.

 

ACCURACY: 3/10

 

5). By the end of the year, at least 7 of the top 10 sites in Alexa's Global 500 index will be of Chinese origin (there are 4 currently), reflecting the massive spike in internet use in China.

 

- A rising tide raises all ships. Certainly there's been more internet take-up in China, but traffic across the board has increased and there are still just 4 Chinese sites in Alexa's top 10 (though several more populate the next 10 places).

 

ACCURACY: 4/10

 

6). Pay per click marketing will get a lot harder, with major search engines clamping down especially hard on affiliate listings. The cost of the most strongly contested keywords will skyrocket.

 

- Google's moves to prevent more than one ad per target URL plus relevancy requirements being tightened across the board have certainly made PPC more difficult.

 

ACCURACY: 9/10

 

7). Gmail will come out of beta.

 

- In quality, service reliability and feature set, yes. In name, no (grrr!)

 

ACCURACY: 8/10

 

8). At least one of the following behemoths will be acquired / merge (though not necessarily by or with each other): Amazon, eBay, Yahoo, Google.

 

- The 4 giants are still standing alone. I was really off here!

 

ACCURACY: 0/10

 

9). MSN Search will be a real contender (Top 3 traffic generator) before the end of 2005.

 

- Getting there, getting there. Not yet a top 3, but increasing steadily.

 

ACCURACY: 7/10

 

10). Continuing a trend seen in 2004, the price of storage will become essentially a non-issue in any online service pricing model, with corresponding massive increases in web hosting, file storage and email archiving space seen across most major services.

 

- Storage has basically hit the "as much as you like for free, if you don't mind the ads" level, with companies lining up to host full-length videos at no charge.

 

ACCURACY: 9/10

 

Seems my crystal ball fogged over a little for 2005, since I was down to a mere 67% accuracy.

 

 

PREDICTIONS FOR 2006

1. IDN domain names hit the radar screen with a bang, thanks partly to IE7's built in support for them. (IDN domain names are domains containing native language characters e.g. Chinese or Japanese, etc.) rather than a transliteration of them.

 

2. RSS feeds go mainstream and disappear - many large sites offer them, but users are able to subscribe automatically without really being conscious of what an "RSS feed" is since the software to do so gets much better.

 

3. The Google / AOL deal is only the first step on a slippery slope towards greater ad clutter in the search results.

 

4. The problem of spam is seen to be receding (a battle which is basically won, though "legitimate" email marketers may get hurt in the crossfire).

 

5. Local search players start to mix online and offline giving business advertisers a hybrid way of reaching their audience

 

6. Rolling the dice again, at least one of the following behemoths will be acquired / merge (though not necessarily by or with each other): Amazon, eBay, Yahoo, Google.

 

7. On a worldwide basis, XBox 2 will bomb while the Playstation 3 will be red hot.

 

8. The movie box office will decline again from this year, as the industry permanently shifts to new modes of behaviour (e.g. DVD releases brought forward to almost parallel theatre releases).

 

9. Cameras built into cellphones will be "good enough" to start eating away at the overall digital camera market.

 

10. Old blogs will be abandoned faster than new blogs are started, as the blogging industry moves towards a more businesslike footing and away from the hobby diarist phase.

 

Tune in at the same time next year to see how things turned out.

 

Edwin Hayward