Now it is the time of year ending, where we looking back on last 365 days and making sense to know what the year was all about. Do will call the year as “year of Social Networks” considering the bang of sites a like Del.icio.us, Digg, Technorati, Furl, Yahoo MyWeb, BlogMarks, LQBookmarks, FeedMarker, Frassle, Linkroll, Loom, MyProgs, Reader², Reddit, Scuttle, Unalog, CiteULike, Connectedy, StumbleUpon. Or do will call it as the “Year of Improved Search” considering the development made in the searches of Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Ask.com. Some of them may also call it as the “Year of SEO closing” considering the augment to personalized and custom-made search results has changed the way search marketers go about their jobs.

Summing up all the major changes took place in last 365 days we could call 2007 as the “Year of Bang on Internet Marketing”. Between the consolidation of members in the search and online advertising space, the augmenting ability of search marketers to get the attention of the larger internet marketing groups would look back on 2007 as a coming-of-age year for the search industry.

Year of Social Networks

Considering the fame of social bookmarking sites recognized as social networks such as Flickr and Twitter, with rise of social news sites like Digg and Netscape and start of social search sites like Mahalo and Search Wikia, it would not be unreasonable to call 2007 as the “Year of Social Networks”. Social Networks are also treated as a diversion so it is obvious that search marketers are involved. Social Bookmarking sites were stared to gear up on Internet Marketing circles and it became important for reputation management.

Year of Improved Search

The introduction of universal search result was one of the major and significant changes brought for search engine optimizers. Apart from the well-known “top ten blue links,” internet savvy are not started to see more than just HTML pages attached into search results. There is a lot more appearing such as news stories, videos, images and blog posts. The kick start was given by Google during May by launching Universal search. This was further followed by Microsoft in September, and then Yahoo took over by adding its blended search during October.

The moves were well-admired with great interest, but no one denied the importance of advertisers. The requirement of getting your websites in more searches, believed to be the effects of personalized search result and enlarge the usual definition of SEO became even more significant.

Let’s make out what happened on search advertising side this year. On the search advertising side, the top search advertisement networks such as Adsense, Yahoo Search Marketing and AdCenter all incorporated improved ranking algorithms. Instead of concentrating only on bid amount, now search advertisers have to consider certain factors like click-through rates, in addition to more otherworldly factors like chronological performance and advertisements predictable performance in relation to other advertisement. Yahoo had launched its ad ranking system Panama projects in February. Later Google updated its 18-months-old ad quality scores algorithm. This was followed by Microsoft in April, by adding a quality score element to adCenter.

Year of SEO closing

Gone are those days of old stand-bys of SEO on-page and off-page factors, the year ended up with more of social media and network tools. Not that SEO is entirely closed but certainly the value got diminished. First because of the augmenting significance of inbound links in search engine algorithms, and secondly because of the recent change in search results pages themselves. In addition, universal and mixed search results are needed search promoters to think further than the fundamental Web page to deem optimizing videos, images, text and other types of upright content now presenting up for many search inquiries.

Personalized results of Google were expanded in February, and exposed iGoogle in May. Yahoo added query alteration devices such as Search Assist for users that are by now found in Google Suggest and as well in Ask3D. There are two sides of each coin, nevertheless. On the one side are SEOs’ worries about no longer having universal manage over the search results page. Secondly this is the fact that this might also push search advertisers to think more on marketing side.

To sum up, we can say that 2007 was a year of bang on internet marketing and the search industry turned matured.

Related Posts

  • It’s The Right Time To Start An Online Business – Christmas
  • Social Bookmarking And Resource Discovery
  • Save 20% On .com Domains At GoDaddy – Just $7.99/yr
  • Internet Search Engine Marketing For Beginners
  • Internet Marketing Strategies