We're already in the latter half of 2008--and it seems like yesterday that the pundits were making predictions as to what the search landscape would be like by now. But Jody Nimetz offers a recap of
what actually happened in search over the past six months, starting with the retooling of Ask.
"Ask began the year by replacing their CEO, and hiring marketing man Jim Safka,"
Nimetz says. By spring, there were reports that the engine was shopping its Teoma search technology to a bigger player (namely Google), and though they never came to fruition, Ask did eventually throw
in the towel (sort of).
"By March, the hammer had fallen as Ask announced that they were tired of competing with Google to try and gain market share in the search industry," Nimetz
says. "Jim Safka communicated that based on research that they had done on their target demographic that ASK.com would begin targeting women specifically housewives in the 25-40 age range."
Meanwhile, Google continued to chug along, pumping out improvements for Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics, launching Google Health and eventually Ad Planner. Still, there was a hiccup when
comScore reported that the search giant was experiencing little to no growth in paid clicks.
And of course, the Microhoo saga that began February continues to play out as we cruise
through the summer. One can only wonder what will become of Live Search (and cashback) and Yahoo (or what remains of it) come winter.
Read the whole story at SEO-Space »