_This article is by Guest Contributor Marc Poirer._
It’s that time of the year. Again. Time for new year resolutions. If you didn’t already come up with your own, here’s mine: go fishing much more often.
I think everyone in the interactive industry knows that 2005 was a great year for search, arguably the greatest yet. By the looks of things, 2006 will be an even better year with more marketers getting serious about paid search and SEO. Rather than simply try to come up with enough material to write “my own” look back at search in 2005 and predictions for 2006, I decided to bring you a great little list of what has been said on the topic. Then I’ll make some predictions anyway, just for the hell of it.
h3. 2005 in Review
* Who better than Danny Sullivan to take a look back at 2005 and “summarize it in one page.”:http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3574126
* Elisabeth Osmeloski rounds up the “best threads of 2005 on searchenginewatch.com.”:http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3573596
* Brett Tabke over at webmasterworld.com asked the forum supporters to “nominate the thread of the year”:http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum78/10243.htm. Note that this is only available to paid supporters of webmasterworld but is worth the price of admission many times over.
h3. 2006 Predictions
* Danny Sullivan asked “Search Engine Watch participants to post their predictions”:http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?threadid=9330 for the new year. And they did. Some real gems in there.
* Internet superstar John Battelle whips out the crystal ball and “posts some Nostradamus-style predictions”:http://battellemedia.com/archives/002149.php.
* Philipp Lenssen of “Google Blogoscoped makes 15 predictions for 2006”:http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2005-12-23-n63.html. He even goes so far as to provide us with probability estimates for each one.
* “Visions of 2006”:http://www.cre8pc.com/blog/2005/12/cre8pcs-seo-usability-and-internet.html by Kim Krause Berg. A satirical view of the future world of search and webmastering in general.
h3. My Own Predictions for 2006
* The battle of the search giants will truly begin. Microsoft will buy Yahoo. As a result of this, the new MSN AdCenter will replace Yahoo Search Marketing
* Microsoft will release Vista and its desktop search will disappoint everyone
* Google will abandon their personalized search program.
* PPC fraud is going to make headlines. As a result prices on “content match” pay-per-click bids will continue to drop dramatically.
Don’t be shy to comment of provide your own predictions, that’s why there is a comments link down there!
Marc Poirier is Senior Strategist and President of “acquisio”:http://www.acquisio.com/, a Montreal-based company that provides software solutions and consulting services to help companies acquire more customers using paid and organic search. He can be reached at .