• SEOmoz, Monday, January 7, 2008 4 PM

The SEOmoz team came up with a set of New Year's resolutions for the search engines in 2008. For Google, it's about coming forward with a clear stance on the great "Paid Link Debate of 2007," and letting Webmasters know exactly how to handle future linking strategies.

Rand Fishkin also advises the giant to clone Matt Cutts, or rather, hire industry evangelists like him who really know their product to represent Google to new, possibly antagonistic, communities. For example, snag someone with years of radio experience who can effectively explain why buying (or selling) a radio spot via auction is better than the old way, for Google Audio ads.

Yahoo's resolutions center on winning back the hearts of searchers through a full-out marketing offensive (a la Ask in 2007), and possibly revamping the main search interface to be more innovative. The Web giant should take steps to get the jump on Google in two key areas--local search and blog search--via acquisitions of smaller players like Yelp or Technorati.

Microsoft should set Live Search free! Much like the Xbox development team is less corporate and more entrepreneurial than "core Microsoft" (and all the more successful for it) the Live Search team should have the freedom to innovate without hierarchies and oversight from non-search business managers. And give them the money to do it.

Meanwhile, Ask should invest in bringing that incredible 3D interface to the mobile Web, and even developing an iPhone-specific hub that will have "every tech geek in the world" ready to show it off.

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