Score: Nostradamus

5. Death of Two Majors

My prediction here read: "I think 2002 will signal demise for at least two of 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 same time. These days 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 search site. In a separate deal at same time, Yahoo partnered with Divine to make Northern Light's Special Collection documents available in a new service called Yahoo Premium Documents Search.

Technically we could say that HotBot also "died" in 2002, given it lost its own search database and became a META search engine in December to display search results from search FAST, Google, Inktomi and Teoma under ownership of Terra Lycos.

Score: Nostradamus

6. One or More Major Partnerships

My prediction was: "I see some major rivals combining in 2002, just to stay alive. I also see some more major partnerships between online and offline firms".

The Yahoo deal with Google in October 2002 to provide combined search listings and Yahoo's purchase announcement of Inktomi in December 2002 spring to mind here. So do many partnerships between Google and search rivals Ask Jeeves / Teoma, AOL and InfoSpace for provision of AdWords paid listings (as listed in 1. above) in 2002 and expansion of Overture via partnerships with various search engines, directories and portals worldwide.

Let's not forget Lycos / FAST deal for paid inclusion services either. Yahoo's 2002 move into ISP market and Ask Jeeves' provision of an offline "butler service" are relevant to latter half of this prediction.

Score: Nostradamus

7. Move away from In-House to Outsourced Services

My original article predicted: "As search engine optimization becomes even more complex and time consuming in 2002, more businesses will realize SEO is a full-time job and not something their marketing or IT staff can do ‘on side'."

A year ago, if you had gone to a major employment site such as careerbuilder.com or monster.com and conducted a search for "search engine optimization", you would have been hard-pressed to find many jobs in this field. Do a search today and you'd be amazed at increase in demand for SEO specialists - just as predicted.

Score: Nostradamus

8. SEO industry Shake-Up

My prediction was: "With consumer watchdogs keeping a close eye, developing industry standards and ethics, as well as crackdown on spammers sure to continue, SEO industry is sure to experience a major shake-up next year, with only most successful and ethical SEO's left still standing."

You could say that 2002 gave rise to ethical SEO. A line in sand was drawn between so-called "ethical" search engine optimizers and marketers (SEM's) and "unethical" search engine optimization firms, nicknamed "Search engine deceivers" (SED's) by some. A number of long-time SED's found themselves permanently banned for search engine spamming by Google in 2002, to sheer delight of many in industry. As more search engines introduced or tightened their anti-spam filters in 2002, many shady SEO cowboys were forced to pack up shop as they realized their spam techniques were no longer effective.

Google's unprecedented decision to publish their definition of "ethical" search engine optimization on their Webmaster Guidelines page forced many search engine marketing firms to rethink their SEO techniques. It was also start of what many believe is a new era in industry, where search engines and professional SEO's start to communicate openly, creating an information exchange for possible development of an industry-wide set of acceptable search engine optimization standards.

Score: Nostradamus

9. New Technologies

My final prediction read: "I'm sure there will be some significant technological developments in 2002 that will impact search engine industry and make us all head for forums and chat rooms in a panic."

Sure enough, developments such as Google News, Gator, LookSmart LookListings, SEO Consultants Directory, Overture's Auto-Bidding Tool, Froogle, Wireless Search, TopText, Link Loader, MPZ Format, Chinese Government's ban on Google and Search King's PR Ad Network resulted in some frantic forum activity in 2002.

But none of these compare to storm in a teacup caused by a little green bar. Yep, Google Page Rank™ gets my vote for most talked about technology in search for 2002.

Score: Nostradamus

So with a final score of eight out of nine, it looks like I'm ninety percent Nostradamus after all (-: .

At this point, you could say that search industry was almost exclusively driven by profit and share price. At many of majors, needs of searcher were temporarily replaced by (or mistaken for) needs of shareholders.

>> But in background a relatively small search engine had been slowly building their database and gaining market share since 1998. Increasing numbers of searchers, disappointed with irrelevant or outdated results they were receiving at other sites, began to flock to this newcomer with curious name: Google. Despite still being in BETA mode, search engine began to get a reputation for quality of sites in its database, lightening fast results it produced and simple, no-nonsense site design. Media attention arrived, as did more market share.

The major search engines and directories now had no choice but to sit up and take notice. Almost too late, they realized what they had been doing wrong for past few years and why they were losing market share so easily to this young upstart firm. Searchers have always wanted fast, relevant, up to date results from their chosen search engine. The fact was that very few directories and engines were offering this any longer. Their sites had become portals packed with advertising and third party information sources; original search function seemingly lost in forest of information. But Google had made a point of ALWAYS offering searchers what they wanted, hence their success. The penny dropped and majors scrambled to get back to basics. Yahoo! took things one step further and embraced Google as their new third party results provider, taking a small investment stake in company and dumping industry veteran Inktomi in process.

So where are we now in plot of "Days of our Search Engines"? Over past 12 months, some search engines and directories lost their way completely, yielding to pressure in boardroom to become more profitable and in so doing, losing forever trust of their market. Others simply slipped a long way off radar and are desperately trying to claw their way back up mountain. But with KISS example set by Google and glaring evidence that you CAN be profitable by listening to users rather than cash registers, search industry storyline is finally getting back on track.

Yahoo! has recently combined Google results with their main search listings, new technically advanced engines such as FAST and Teoma are making an impact on market and AltaVista appears to be making solid efforts to improve their index refresh rate and quality of results. The end result is a richer user experience for searchers and a more promising future for search industry where content is, once again, king.

Article by Kalena Jordan, CEO of Web Rank. Kalena was one of the first search engine optimization experts in Australasia and is well known and respected in her field. For more of her articles on search engine ranking and online marketing, please visit High Search Engine Ranking.