• by David Berkowitz , January 2, 2007

I'm a prediction junkie. Of the 40 Search Insider columns by any author in the past year that included some form of the word "predict," I wrote 40% of them, though I only wrote 20% of the columns. I'm fascinated by connecting the dots of the past to try to foretell what's ahead. Now, thanks in large part to reviewing the events of the previous year, here's what you can expect in 2007:

1) Health Search Revitalizes the Vertical Boom. Some of the features from health search engines have already inspired features in the major engines (type in "diabetes" in Google for an example of Google's "refine results" options; the same refinement is offered now for other searches, such as "wii" and "zelda"). I ran a column on Healia a few months back, and in the past few months, I've spoken to a number of other companies in the space. Given the complexities of health queries and the importance of them to the searcher, they're going to set the bar for every kind of search.

2) It's another lukewarm year for mobile search. I'm going to keep predicting this until I'm wrong. Look at the content deals YouTube and others are striking; it's not about being able to search through all the sites' content, but being able to access selections of it. If you look at the most groundbreaking deals the major engines strike in the mobile space this year, they'll all be international. The U.S. won't be as fruitful a market.

3) Google strikes cable and radio partnerships. I'm not going to belabor this one since everyone's waiting for deals of this sort. I'll also add, for good measure, that Google will sign a major deal for outdoor advertising. Google-brokered billboards and urinal ads aren't that far off.

4) Video shows signs of growing pains. I'm waiting for the backlash to online video consumption to hit, and it's either coming this year or the year after. I won't discount the growth potential for video advertising. Yet consumption of video's going to hit a wall quicker than most people think, and it's because of the answer to the following question: "What are consumers going to watch while they're watching online video?

People can watch seven hours of TV a day, but that's only because they're not spending seven hours a day just watching TV. Along with the media multitasking (going online, surfing the Internet, reading the newspaper) while the TV's on, we're cooking or eating meals, folding the laundry, chatting on the phone, or playing with the kids (except when "The Office" is on). When watching a video online, we're only watching that video. We've dropped everything else to watch that clip. Food, sex, shelter, and multitasking--meet the four basic human needs. Since there are only so many hours in a day where one can consume online video, and since video content in general is much better suited to televisions than Internet devices, the rate of growth of online video consumption per person is going to slow.

5) Video tagging and hotspotting will change how people find and consume online video. Video producers will easily be able to tag video content in myriad ways, from dividing it up into chapters just like those on DVDs to tagging elements such as characters, genres, quotes, and other aspects.

Additionally, expect hotspotting to become a household word. Through this technology, producers can isolate characters, sets, products, and other elements within the video and not just tag them but link them. For instance, in a clip of the "The Office," clicking star Steve Carell might link to his bio on NBC.com, and clicking office supplies or furniture might link to Office Depot. With both video tagging and hotspotting, the most successful of these companies will find their tags better optimizing videos for the major search engines, not just video search sites.

6) Image search will wow you. You'll be able to search for faces, colors, and even ideas within images. Tags will help, but a lot of this will come from more sophisticated technology, such as facial recognition. The technology emerged last year, but in 2007, it comes out of beta.

7) It's the year of the tag. Some might say this was true for 2006, but I'd argue that tags remained largely confined to early adopters, such as users of Yahoo's My Web and del.icio.us. In 2007, Amazon will feature tagging more prominently, Video tagging will make content more accessible, tags will be part of Search Wikia (the heavily hyped "Google killer" from Wikipedia's founder), and tags will gain the spotlight as a major building block of the Web.

8) Online data storage ups the ante: 100 gigabytes free. There's an online data storage arms race, chronicled best right now by blogger Jeremiah Owyang (featured in a previous column). In 2007, the capacity on free sites will rival that of external hard drives.

Thanks go to countless readers, colleagues, friends, and others who've shared their insights and opinions, plus information on their companies, making these predictions more grounded than they would be otherwise. There's no shortage of giants' shoulders to stand on, and I look forward to the conversations to come. Happy New Year.