• by Steve Baldwin , December 8, 2008

None of us have crystal balls or the power of clairvoyance. Still, there are trends and scenarios that are evident enough to provide a better than even chance of manifesting themselves in the upcoming year. So here's a list of 10 things that will happen in 2009 in the world of search. If I'm wrong about any of them, I'll refund all of the money you spent to read this article.

1. The U.S. will reexamine Google's market dominance. Just last week, we all learned that Google was just three hours away from being busted by the Justice Department for violation of sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act when it withdrew its bid for Yahoo. Yes, Google dodged a bullet this time, but I firmly believe that 2009 will be the year when all of the collective grievances about Google -- the ones that industry people have been whispering about for years but have been afraid to speak of in public because they've feared reprisal -- will finally break into the mainstream, and Washington will take notice, perhaps with hearings that will galvanize the nation.

2. Keyword prices will not come down. The beautiful thing about keyword auctions, as the lifeblood of online business activity, is that you can always find somebody desperate enough to bid something for them. Even better, a non-transparent auction run by a cryptic algorithm incorporating a mysterious element called Quality Score always ensures that the maximum price will be paid for each term, benefiting the auction-operator. It's just like Manhattan real estate, where values magically rise even as prices in the rest of the country plummet. So in 2009, even as e-marketers shrink, consolidate, or go out of business, and stressed business owners fight desperately for visibility, there will be no "deals" for keywords, except on search engines that nobody uses. Trust me on this one.

3. The SEO profession will burgeon. Bruce Clay told me recently that there are already more than 200,000 SEOers practicing their dark and shady craft. Expect this number to double by the end of 2009, as a large percentage of laid-off Wall Street financial rocket scientists reinvent themselves as SEO specialists hawking "advanced portfolio models" and "hedged counterparty link strategies" to ensure top-rankings on SERPs.

4. The mass media die-off will accelerate. Your favorite newspaper? Gone. Your favorite TV anchor? History. That magazine you used to read in the bathroom? Better reach for your iPhone instead. 2009 will be known as "The Year The News Died," but only in the blogosphere, whose unpaid scribes will probably misspell the headline.

5. Another AOL-Style privacy breach will occur. There is now so much data -- much of it search-related -- floating around in the hands of private companies that it's practically inevitable it will leak out in a way that profoundly damages the privacy interests of thousands, perhaps millions, of U.S. citizens. It only takes one guy with a grudge to hold an entire nation's data hostage, and there have already been cases where medical data has been ransomed by overseas parties. Someday, we'll look back on this free-and-easy era of data trading as one of unconscionable negligence. In the meantime, look for a large-scale data breach that will make AOL's 2006 leakage of Google-derived search data look like a minor blip.

6. Social network valuations will crumble. This one is a no-brainer. I won't go so far as Michael Wolff when he claims that "everybody on MySpace is a cretin," but anyone seriously claiming that these popular gathering places have anything but the flimsiest advertising potential probably is.

7. Web 2.0 will officially be proclaimed dead. Actually, this already happened, when Razorfish CEO Clark Kokich proclaimed the death of Web 2.0 to iMedia last week. Kokich believes that digital-out-of-home (which seems to mean that highway billboards will soon spell out your name) will replace all of those speculatively funded widgets that used to rule the world. I can't say whether Kokich is correct, but anything that would kill those annoying Web 2.0 conferences is fine with me.

8. SEM trade shows will consolidate. Speaking of conferences, I predict that 2009 will be a miserable year for trade shows, especially those dealing with SEM. Even two years ago, when the economy was going like gangbusters, vendors -- the people who support these things -- were rethinking the value of spending thousands for a booth when the leads they were getting were practically worthless. Today, such an exercise in extravagant inefficiency is unthinkable, and shows will suffer accordingly.

9. Microsoft will change MSN/Live/or whatever it's called to something else that nobody can remember. Tongues have been wagging about Microsoft changing the name of its search service to something like "KUMO," but I predict that this won't happen. I place my bets on the far sexier "KRAKATOA" (a search engine with explosive wide-screen results), "KARMA" (the search engine that pays you in cash for your clean thoughts and right action), or "KAFKA" (the search engine that never lets you actually find anything, but convinces you that you're to blame).

10. Confusion will continue to befuddle CMOs. CMOs (Clueless Marketing Officers) have been confused about search for years, and 2009 won't change this at all. While Rome burns, most of them will continue to fiddle their brand-building songs as they wait out their expected 24 months of tenure for a golden parachute.

Hey, some things never change.

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