2005 Search Engine Trends and a Pile of Predictions

The search engines have done their usual trend-looking for 2005, so let's take a brief look ourselves, shall we?

Google has their 2005 Zeitgeist at http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist2005.html. The first page has just a few listings -- the top gainers for Google searches, top Google News searches, and top Froogle searches. The tabs at the top of the page have the fun stuff. You can look at graphs and commentary for specific searches in different categories: world affairs, nature, movies, celebrities, and phenomena. That Wiki graph is pretty scary (but not at all surprising.)

Yahoo's offerings seem more pop-culturish, at least the stuff on the front page at http://tools.search.yahoo.com/top2005/. does. Don't miss the last graph on that page, a comparison between Napoleon Dynamite and Harry Potter. Sweet! Unfortunately the tabs at the top of the page only lead to separate elements within this page. I liked Google's less-sparsely-populated pages better.

Wondering what's on the plate for searching in 2006? Everybody's weighing in with their two cents. There's an overview and some guesses from Information Today. Phillipp Lenssen has predictions at http://webmarketingtoday.blogspot.com/2006/01/15-search-predictions-for-2006.html. His second prediction is, "Google gets rid of some of their old values and introduce graphic ads on their own site next to search results." My prediction after that would be "Flaming-torch-and-pitchfork-co stock targets at $600."

David Kirkpatrick rings in at Fortune. Greg Linden's got his own ideas. Jeremy Zawodny beat me to the punch with his Feedster Will Die in 2006 post, though I think I'll title mine Feedster, I love you but some of your changes are driving me up a tree already.

Jason Calacanis addresses some topics that few others get around to. Joltin' John Battelle manages to integrate the phrase "speed wobble" into his predictions. He also predicts a stumble for Google. It might be argued that a stumble is better than no motion at all; with all eyes on the company and a stock price recently targeted at over 500 bucks, I'd be nervous about even getting out of bed in the morning.

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