Our predictions for 2006

And so what of 2006? As before, the rate of change over the past 12 months has been very fast and the Internet search market is significantly different to that which we saw 12 months ago. However, here are our predictions on what we might see coming up this year.

1) Internet growth continues: the increasing use of broadband and both consumer and business spend online will continue to fuel the growth of Internet business in 2006. We are likely to see some high spending entrants into the market this year, probably in the travel and shopping markets, plus the football World Cup in June will also provide another big impetus to the use and awareness of the web. Consequently, as the bigger companies start to dominate their markets, new entrants will find it harder to build share in the mainstream sectors and will need to focus budgets on niche sectors.

2) Search marketing gains recognition: yes, the secret is now out and search marketing will grow as a significant discipline of both online and general marketing strategy. Consequently the market will become more crowded, both with optimised sites and also in the area of pay-per-click advertising spend. As a result, companies will need to measure the results of this activity in more detail and channel their advertising through the most effective channels to achieve the best market share for their available budgets. The focus on website content and conversion rates will also become critical as user comparisons with others in the market – based on areas like price, service and presentation – will make all the difference.

3) The PPC market gains a new channel: the expected launch of MSN Search’s PPC tool in the Spring will add another level to this market and seriously undermine Overture’s share of the US and UK markets. The level of control being offered to advertisers by MSN’s new tool will be replicated and expanded upon by Google Ads (AdWords), which is compiling a huge amount of information on search usage patterns and traffic statistics.

4) Another big year for Google: there will be more new products and services launched by Google in 2006, although to make many of these work it will also need to encourage changes to search usage and techniques in a market that can be very conservative based on habit. We predict that Google will launch its own web browser (or acquire Mozilla’s Firefox browser for its own use) in the summer to challenge Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and to take some publicity away from Microsoft’s launch of its next operating system, Vista.

5) Online viral attacks: we don’t like to predict a doom laden event, but a big viral infection across networked computers is probably overdue. Computer users are now more wary and anti-virus packages are more widely used, so the next big challenge will be to stop a browser based virus spreading across the web at a reckless speed. This could strike in the second half of this year as Microsoft fails to block a potential exposure in the security of Internet Explorer.

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