Looking Back, Forging Ahead

CNET and Search Engine Watch round up the top Web and search stories of 2005 in their respective editorial opinions. It's interesting stuff to reflect upon.

In many ways, 2005 reestablished the "credibility" of the Internet and the efficacy of online—search in particular—as an advertising medium. In 2006 we're likely to see many of the same trends and themes repeat themselves and become even more pronounced. On the local front, we'll see more competition, consolidation, accelerated consumer adoption of the Internet for local lookups, strong movement by some newspapers online, more penetration of PPCall, more social and user-generated media, and further acceleration of online video and fragmentation of the TV audience.

We're working on our 2006 forecast and hope to have that ready in the relatively near future. (We're expanding the scope of the forecast this year.)

Meanwhile, here's MediaPost's (reg. req'd) write-up of Borrell's 2006 forecast (which appears to be directionally accurate and reflect a strong perspective re online newspapers and local TV). I disagree with some of the numbers, as reported, and there appears, from the article, to be an incomplete understanding of the relatively complex dynamics of the Local Search Ecosystem (TM) and SME behavior.

But we agree there will be growth; where and how are the issues.