What is the likely trends for 2010?

What do we expect to see as the main trends for this year that will impact web search and online marketing activities? Here are our predictions for some of the key developments expected this year.

1) Pay-per-click advertising opportunities increase:? PPC advertising – and Google Ads (AdWords) in particular – is now a much more prominent part of the search experience and a powerful marketing tool used successfully by many companies. Google is already experimenting with new advert display formats, such as local maps, images and video, partly to improve the user experience and also to gain more revenue. These formats will become more widespread this year as Google also develops the service to counter the launch of the combined and improved Microsoft/Yahoo PPC service, and overall, the opportunities for advertisers will be increased to help expand the impact and reach of this fast-growing form of advertising.

2) The Bing-Yahoo merger takes effect:? as noted above, the acquisition last year by Microsoft of Yahoo’s search service will begin to take effect this year once the regulatory and structural issues get resolved. In theory, the combination of the next 2 most popular English-language search tools after Google should be significant and create more of a challenge to Google’s dominance, although the quality of the search results and the services being offered will need to be considerable to change inbuilt user habits and make a dent on Google’s market share. As part of the merger, it is hoped that a new and improved PPC service will be launched so that advertisers have a better alternative to Google Ads (AdWords) with an improved user friendly interface and more reliable results than is currently offered by Yahoo.

3) Personalised search impacts search marketing:? the low key introduction of Google’s personalised search results for all web users (rather than just those signed into their user accounts) has passed relatively unnoticed in the press but this could start to have a significant impact on the performance of their search results this year. From a search engine optimisation perspective, it will become harder to track the ranking visibility of a website, although the important measure of a successful SEO campaign will remain the increase in search engine referral traffic as a result of any marketing investment on the site.

4) Twitter’s make or break year:? 12 months is a long time for the Internet and the growth of Twitter in the past year has clearly shown this. The micro-blogging service has attracted a huge amount of press coverage and online comment, but the next 12 months will really determine whether Twitter becomes a significant marketing tool or fades from view as the next fad comes along. Twitter needs to start making money from its growing user base, or it will be an acquisition target. Outside of a hard-core of users, it also needs to demonstrate to businesses that it can be an effective marketing tool that is worth the input time. It certainly can’t be ignored if it continues to grow, and it’s likely that the service will become more sophisticated this year to offer users a better return, which will also place the service on a more secure financial footing.

5) Local search options see new developments:? we’ve predicted improvements for small companies through local search marketing in the past and the opportunities continue to improve, particularly for those impacted by the new generation of Internet mobile phones. It is likely that new PPC opportunities will be introduced for local businesses to help improve the focus of their online budgets, plus the increasing localisation of social networking services will also open up new opportunities for companies to reach their target markets.

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