2015 - emerging trends on search, what are you predicting?

[Whitey]

Here's some things/questions happening recently that I saw :

- Matt Cutt's may have left his previous Google role for good [ is there such a need for a role on outreach with the new algo's ]... what's the signal ?
- Duane Forrester made redundant at Bing [ ditto , following Google ]
- Panda quality algo seems resolute and relatively unforgiving
- Penguin was certainly resolute and hasn't forgiven anyone en-masse
- Mobile growing exponentially at the expense of desktop search
- More competitive platforms strengthening to be seen on e.g. Social / Facebook , Pinterest , Instagram
- Will search engines alone matter as much in the grander scheme of things
- Smarter SEO ?

What search engine trends are you seeing, what does it tell us, and how will your competitors embrace the changes in 2015 .... / thoughts ?

[austtr]

Confident webmasters in 2015 will re emerge equipped with ideas that will make Google follow them, rather than they follow Google.

I always admire a positive outlook…. good luck with getting your web mastering skills to influence Google's search direction.

Predictions for search in 2015?

[hypothesis]

- A growing number of web masters will come to accept that search has little to do with content, quality, user experience, social profile or any of the other metrics being bandied about. They'll realise it's all about the money and any site with a business model that siphons money which Google thinks it is entitled to is not going to be allowed back into the game. Is this why there are no Penguin recoveries?

- Sites with a business model that depend on free traffic via SERP placements will wither and die. Most already have beginning with the first Penguin release. Once again… is this why there are no Penguin recoveries?

- Search with Adwords will remain a central platform that supports the Google share price. Wall St demands increased profits so Goggle has to look for ways to deliver that. Look for more SERP screen real estate to be given over to Google revenues.

- Expect new Google properties such as Google Real Estate, Google Finance, Google Rentals, Google Supermarket etc etc (maybe not all in 2015) to be launched and placed at the top of SERP's pages as is currently done with Google Hotels, Google Flights, Google Shopping. Also expect to see these properties inserted into search results similar to Google News, YouTube etc.

- Expect to see Google search get a free ride in the USA but run into increasing flack in Europe for monopoly practices, promoting sites with bogus reviews, content ownership conflicts, search manipulation and the like.

- Expect to see more emphasis on all things mobile, in hopes of creaming most of the mobile advertising dollar. Will sites not designed for, or never intended for mobile, suffer collateral damage in search results?

- Will Google + be force-fed ….. nah, I'd still be writing next week if I start on that.

[/hypothesis]

Bottom line? Google Search is a winning formula. They are not going to change anything unless there is an opportunity to increase their profits. Commercial reality…. live with it.

[netmeg]

Organic search for ecommerce sites selling products has dried up and requires participating in Adwords if you want any measurable traffic

Not my experience across multiple sites.

[edited by: aakk9999 at 11:52 am (utc) on Dec 24, 2014]

[jmccormac]

Mid to late 2015 - the emergence of some new gTLD domains being used to market exact match/locality websites in the real world thus bypassing Google.

Matt Cutts decides to stay on his holidays.

Regards...jmcc

[LanceBachmann1]

@Whitey - Thanks for a warm welcome.

Yes I had similar thoughts over this as these days people are writing unique contents already but are not getting the results they are looking for. Using synonym will help the algorithm to co-relate the search when any Brand will become popular. Surely one can see good excel; if goes smoothly with my listed points and see desired results coming up. With mobile seaches such short and smart written content will be useful but in-case of query pulling results they will show only relevant search query related data in mobile if website is having high authority brand.

For Global penalties, I too have similar thoughts.. SEO is getting refined and better as SEO in context with Google penalties only.

[thedonald123]

- Mobile growing exponentially at the expense of desktop search
- Will search engines alone matter as much in the grander scheme of things

The above and One more prediction for 2015
- Mobile Apps use growing at the expense of the mobile web. The mobile browser is not an enjoyable experience, and so Apps have won the war, and as a Web Publisher that is bad news because there are only so many Apps the average smartphone user will install.

Here's what I've seen in 2014 vs. 2013 and I suspect that the trends will continue exponentially.
- 2014 revenue was 80% of 2013,
- numbers of visitors were about the same, no growth!
- Pageviews per visitors continue to decrease.
- huge shift from desktop to mobile
- substantial decrease in CPM's for mobile, this was year that advertisers stopped paying the same for mobile vs. desktop

[samwest]

Will Google ever learn how to use that home page for anything more useful or attractive? Here we are nearly 20 years later and that boring list of results and snippets has hardly changed. I find that rather humorous. I see a LOT of possibilities on new serp layouts, more graphic and responsive. Lots of wasted real estate.

[aristotle]

If I had one wish for the future of search, it would be for search engines to be able incorporate veracity as a major ranking factor.

Unfortunately there are numerous websites filled with lies and mis-information, and some of them are being heavily promoted, with tons of money available for both positive and negative SEO as well as other types of promotion. When Google began biasing their results to favor big brands, it also helped the rankings of some of these big deceitful websites. This is harmful to society and impedes the future progress of humankind.

Sometimes members here at WebmasterWorld talk about "authority" as a ranking factor, but in my opinion we should be talking more about veracity. If a group of dishonest people has enough money available, they are currently able to dupe Google and other search engines into treating their website as an "authority", even though it is full of mis-information. This is proven by the current state of the search results. In my opinion this is main problem that the search engines should be working on.

[RedBar]

Will Google ever learn how to use that home page for anything more useful or attractive?

There are some search engines out there that do provide an alternative layout however, insofar as I am concerned I've tried them and quickly became overwhelmed with the amount of stuff that was there when all I wanted was a black on white answer with a simple blue link...but then again I try to be minimalist, completely the opposite to what I have on my sites which are "loaded" with information!

In my opinion this is main problem that the search engines should be working on.

In my widget sector Bing stomps all over Google in this respect. I see misinformation in my widget sector on an hourly basis, not just once or twice a week/month, however many-a-time I don't think it's the site trying to deceive, they've plainly been given the incorrect information by their supplier/wholesaler who, most of the time, does not know the facts anyway!

I'll explain this by saying consider a raw product originally sourced in say India, is shipped for processing in Italy and then subsequently sold to a US company with Made In Italy on it. Yes, it was processed in Italy however the country of origin is actually India and this is the question that 99+% of people want to know the answer to when sourcing my widgets.

And then it gets even more complicated when explaining what the raw product actually is when Europe says one thing, India says another then the US and China another!

My sites are as factual as I can get them but even then I have to question myself and do a lot of extra research before I will finally publish to ensure I am corrrect ...and then I get scraped:-(

[EditorialGuy]

I'll explain this by saying consider a raw product originally sourced in say India, is shipped for processing in Italy and then subsequently sold to a US company with Made In Italy on it. Yes, it was processed in Italy however the country of origin is actually India and this is the question that 99+% of people want to know the answer to when sourcing my widgets.

I don't think it's realistic to expect Google and other crawler-based search engines to trace a product's origins, figure out who's going to put a thumb on the virtual scale when selling me a peck of potatoes, etc. The phrase "caveat emptor" existed long before the Web and search engines came along.

As a user, I'm happy if a search engine can help me find relevant pages with intrinsically-useful content.

[aristotle]

Well RedBar, I wasn't talking about un-intentional misinformation about a commercial product, or even misleading ads or sales promotions. I was talking about important social issues that affect all of humankind.

[netmeg]

I was talking about important social issues that affect all of humankind.

I don't think Google wants to play that kind of veracity police, and I'm reasonably sure I wouldn't want them to if they did. There's a lot of disagreement about "social issues that affect all of humankind" as it is - do you really want Google deciding which of these opinions are facts?

Liars lie. They lie online and they lie offline. They lie about big things and they lie about little things. They have always lied, and they always will lie. It's up to each of us to do the due diligence and decide what makes sense to us. Not governments, and definitely not Google.

I don't think what you're talking about is a search engine issue.

[aristotle]

I never said that Google should decide which opinions are facts. Facts and opinions are too different things.

And search engines are involved, whether they (or we) want them involved or not. They're involved because some evil individuals or groups are willing to spend billions of dollars to try to influence their rankings. They're also involved because large numbers of people use them to search for information, and the search results largely determine what sources of information they find.

As for disagreement about issues, a lot of that disagreement is due to misinformation. In some ways the web is a reflection of society, but it's also a big influence on society, and whether that influence is good or bad is partly determined by how well the search engines are able to differentiate between what's true and what isn't. I sure hope that Google and the other search engines recognize this, and do the best job they can of filtering out mis-information.

[lucy24]

I was talking about important social issues that affect all of humankind.

And you want the search engine to determine what's an objective, measurable fact? I could just about trust a search engine to tell me the current population of Vancouver. Anything more controversial than that ... nuh-uh.

[aristotle]

And you want the search engine to determine what's an objective, measurable fact?

Yes I want the search engines to try to do this, as best they can.

[austtr]

I'm with the camp that says a search engine should not be held liable for the accuracy of everything that comes up in a search. They don't write the content.

However, search engines' core business is controlling/manipulating the way in which content is made available to viewers, and to make money in the process of doing so.

So when high exposure authority sites are found to be acting dishonestly (see Italy vs TripAdvisor) I believe all search engines then have an obligation to impose penalties, no matter what commercial deals are in place.

[EditorialGuy]

Yes I want the search engines to try to do this, as best they can.

OK, what about:

"age of earth"

Google says 4.54 billion years, but if you were a Creationist, you'd probably throw a snit fit because the Bible told you that the "objective, measurable fact" was somewhere around 6,000 years.

Or how about:

"number of planets in solar system"

The International Astronomical Union now says "eight" (down from the previous nine) but whether that number is an "objective, measurable fact" depends on whether you were one of the astronomers who voted to change the IAU's definition of "planet" in 2006.

[aristotle]

In cases of uncertainty, or of genuine scientific disputes, the best websites will present the major differing views.

In sum, everyone should want to make their own judgements, and reach their own conclusions, but they have a better chance of arriving at the truth if the search engines guide them to the best sources of information.

But I'm not interesed in quibbles, so I'm not going to make any more posts in this thread today

[jmccormac]

Google SERPs continue to degrade due to the rate of new website development declining more than it did in 2013/2014.<snip> will be oblivious to this declining development rate because they only cut and paste blurbs from technology churnalists who wouldn't know a development rate spreadsheet from a hole in the ground.

The lockout of Google from ccTLDs due to continues to impact Google SERPs. Google may try to rerun that Getting Business Online offer with major registrars/hosters in ccTLD positive countries.

Biggest victim of Google's declining SERPs quality: SEOs

Regards...jmcc

[edited by: incrediBILL at 2:21 am (utc) on Jan 1, 2015]
[edit reason] TOS #4 [/edit]

[EditorialGuy]

Google SERPs continue to degrade due to the rate of new website development declining more than it did in 2013/2014.

How would a decline in new Web sites lead to degradation of the SERPs?

If the churn-and-burn crowd are doing less churning and content farms are planting fewer acres, that's unlikely to hurt Google's either Google's search results or the people who use them.

[jmccormac]

In simple terms, attrition. New domain name registrations not being developed into working websites. Old domain names and websites dropping. One year wonders (single year registrations with no renewals) increasing. It is a very subtle balance between deletion, replacement and development and one that the <SNIP> never see. Somehow I wonder if the much vaunted people in Google's Search section even realise what is happening. One could hardly expect the churnalists and Google fans to realise what is happening as they are being cooked like frogs in a slowly warming pan of water. And the funny thing is that some blackhat activities will become so apparent that even Google's spam team will be able to find them easily.

Regards...jmcc

[edited by: incrediBILL at 2:15 am (utc) on Jan 1, 2015]
[edit reason] TOS #4 [/edit]

[EditorialGuy]

In simple terms, attrition. New domain name registrations not being developed into working websites. Old domain names and websites dropping. One year wonders (single year registrations with no renewals) increasing. It is a very subtle balance between deletion, replacement and development and one that the <snip> never see.

Attrition? One can only hope. According to Internet Live Stats, there are now more than 1.1 billion Web sites (a number that has grown hugely in the last three years). One needn't be a <snip> to realize that quantity and quality are two different things.

In keeping with this topic of this thread, here's another prediction:

- As search engines get better at distinguishing between #*$! and Shinola, the profitability of the former will decline, and the result will be fewer Web sites but better search results.

[jmccormac]

Attrition? One can only hope. According to Internet Live Stats, there are now more than 1.1 billion Web sites (a number that has grown hugely in the last three years). One needn't be a "Google fanboy" or "Google fangirl" to realize that quantity and quality are two different things.

Don't think that I ever heard of that site but then it is the kind of site that would appeal to those who don't know about the reality of the web. Here's the killer phrase: " By "Website" we mean unique hostname ". Most Google fanboys and fangirls haven't a clue about the reality of the web and how many websites that appear in one TLD don't really exist in that TLD as they are just clones of sites in other TLDs. Most of the "websites" in many TLDs are either PPC parking pages or holding pages. The real web, at domain name level, is a lot smaller than people think.

Tourism and tourism commentary websites will be downgraded in much the same way as lyrics websites as Google decides to move on the tourism niche.

As for the attrition factor, it is quite easy to see how people who don't appreciate what is happening might be happy with it. The technology churnalists never even realised that the .COM came within 60K domain names of going negative on monthly growth in 2014. In .COM terms, that was a very lucky escape. The psychological effect of .COM going negative would be interesting given that .NET and .ORG have been losing domain names (growth erratic), .INFO has lost millions of domain names in the last few years and .BIZ had a rather poor renewal rate on its 2013 promotion.

Regards...jmcc

[edited by: jmccormac at 10:49 pm (utc) on Dec 26, 2014]

[jmccormac]

Prediction #n: With Matt Cutts staying on holiday, Google starts a blackhat bounty scheme to augment its spam team. :)

Regards...jmcc

[lucy24]

Does "attrition" mean something more sophisticated than a simple "everyone who previously didn't have a website has now got one, so the numbers are leveling off"? If you made a graph, would it be the same shape as a graph of, say, car or TV or cell phone ownership?

Churn & burn is a huge number if you're counting on your fingers-- but was it ever a significant proportion of the total number of websites?

[jmccormac]

It is a bit more sophisticated, Lucy24,
In any given month, there will be millions of domain names deleting and millions more being registered. As long as the number of new registrations is higher than the number of deletions, the TLD will appear healthy. But drilling down to web level gives a better view. Some of the deletions will never have had any development and will be one year wonders. If the number deletions with previously active websites starts to overtake the number of new registrations that are being developed into working websites, then the TLD has problems. Growth and registrations in many of the gTLDs has been driven by coupons and discounts over the last few years. The worst case was the growth and collapse of .INFO and its micro/mini websites. It peaked at about 8 million domain names but it has fallen back to about 5.5 million.

It is not as simple as car/phone/etc ownership as these sites are more unique than a single (or limited number) mass produced item. Correspondingly, there's a development cost for each site. With Google murdering Mom and Pop websites and businesses, the incentive to develop has been reduced. Churn and burn has become a significant proportion of domains/websites in 2014. The stats for the renewals of one year registrations in the gTLDs have fallen dramatically over the last ten years. The problem with measuring it is that the domain name business operates on the principle of a domain year. A site could be churned and burnt within days but the domain will still remain in the zone until the hosting expires and or the domain comes up for renewal. The problem with this kind of thing is that it is a rarified level of supercrunching.

Regards...jmcc

[ken_b]

jmccormac;
How do Domain names that registered but not developed for years affect the numbers? Lets say I've owned and have developed example.com for years but also owned the .net, .org etc, for just as long but have not developed them or redirected them etc.

Do those extras dilute the numbers to any great extent?

Any idea of how many of those extras get abandoned each year?

.

[jmccormac]

How do Domain names that registered but not developed for years affect the numbers? Lets say I've owned and have developed example.com for years but also owned the .net, .org etc, for just as long but have not developed them or redirected them etc.

If there is a proper redirect in place, then they would just show up as a 301/302 redirect in any survey. Otherwise they would not show up as being used but would show up as being registered. The one year wonders are quite different to the veteran domain names (one or more renewals). They drop but the more money that is paid in renewal fees, the less likely that a domain name will be dropped unless the registrant is doing a consolidation move (dropping non-core registrations to concentrate on their com/ccTLD domain). The renewal rates for these domain names also tends to be somewhat higher. They change from being a registration to being an "investment" for the registrant.

Do those extras dilute the numbers to any great extent?

They do drop and represent a percentage of the domain names dropping each month.

Any idea of how many of those extras get abandoned each year?

It would require a bit of crunching to get the figures.

Regards...jmcc

[incrediBILL]

ADMINS NOTE:
I normally don't post notes like this but the continued issues of members being offended by these things needs to be stated in public to all are aware of our policy.

Please keep it all civil as trying to deride, denigrate or call others names or disparage their opinions will not be tolerated.


See TOS #4:

Always be respectful of other users, the system, and the moderators.

Name calling and other subsequent attempts to incite an emotional response in others with terms like "Google fanboys and fangirls" or the "Gorg" and other such derogatory terms have no place in a professional SEO discussion on WebmasterWorld.

WebmasterWorld tries to maintain an unbiased discussion forum where the open and free exchange of ideas. However, making fun of the companies, those that like them, and their opinions is not a discussion, it's an attempt to ridicule which has no place on WebmasterWorld.

Please keep to the topic and leave those colorful taunts off WebmasterWorld.

[Whitey]

More crystal balls needed for us to stay OT :-)
>>

2015 will herald a serious challenge to ecommerce No 1 spot in search ; with social purchasing starting to become a mainstream alternative, as marketers start to realize the value in crowd sourced purchasing among a very large number of purchading options. This article is getting a bit dated
[en.m.wikipedia.org...]

I used the link to get some reaction going,

We saw the introduction of this type of thing with the advent of coupon sites which often pulled the audience on via search engines, but I believe socially networked purchasing will overtake this and move the relevance of social over search even more.

Facebook has been playing with the "buy" button and its own payment platform for a while. I expect they are well into understanding how they can clip a margin on better defined purchasing habits. I can only imagine search will play, eventually a distant 2nd fiddle to this.

So folks need to think their SEO content related strategies more for social than search. ( I just read an interesting article on a $10,000 start up in fashion that is really making it big time - search was never their first choice of getting out there - they used a combination of celebrity endorsement and visual portrayal connected through Instagram ). But Google does follow them like a puppy dog .

So without links how will Google mark content as relevant when it's origins are in social? 2015 is going to get exciting .

What type of content will rock in 2015?

[edited by: Whitey at 3:13 am (utc) on Dec 27, 2014]

[jmccormac]

Google's advantages are in indexing the "dead" web. That's the part of the web that doesn't change much from one year to the next. Approximately 23% of the active web could be like this (brochureware). The SE that manages to successfully index and contextualise the live web, (the rapidly changing and often socially driven web) will be the winner. The real wildcard in this will be Microsoft unless it manages to seize defeat from the jaws of victory. Many of these SM driven events will be short-term swarms and will peak and dissipate before long cycle search engines can index them. It might require multiple indexes and a different way of thinking about Search -- or an old way.

Regards...jmcc