It's been quite an interesting year in search engine optimization. And another fast one as things continue to evolve quickly. The year saw changes in three distinct areas-
The first was "blended" search. Instead of just providing the top ten links to HTML home pages for any search, the search engines started to provide links to news stories, blog posts, local business, directories and other things all in an effort to provide the most important information for the term typed in. The response from searchers has been positive. All of the "big four" (Google, Yahoo, MSN's Live and Ask) now show blended results.
Pay-per-click (search advertising) incorporated a measure of quality into their ad ranking algorithms. It's not all about bidding for the better rank anymore. By improving one's ads and aligning with the target page, an advertiser can be ranked higher than a potentially inferior ad.
Social media also took great strides with the emergence of Facebook, Digg, Duct Tape Marketing's Workbench, and others. While the popularity continues to rise based on the relationship structure, there's no telling how robust these networks will eventually become.
All in all, it's was a quickly changing seo world this year. I'll sum up how 2008 will shape up on an upcoming post.
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