Predicting the Future of Search for 2005

The soothsayer warned Julius Caesar to “beware the ides of March”. March 15th is almost upon us but perhaps we should beware of soothsayers instead?

There is a three part article predicting the future of search on E Commerce Times.

Part one covers search extending beyond the web or “webifying” everything. Pundits just love coming up with their own vocabulary.

Here are a few more predictions.

Clustering will take off, whereby a search term will produce results in potentially related groups.

Value added search. Value added is so over used these days it can mean whatever the speaker wants it to be. In this case, value added means more customized and specialized results. The ability to search library books, desktop search and visual search.

Differentiating search results by giving away prizes for using a search engine is another idea mentioned. Of course the proponent of that idea is the company, Blingo’s co founder. Well, doesn’t iwon.com already do something similar?

Last time I checked they were not one of the top 5 engines. Buying users with cheap prizes like movie tickets won’t get you to the top. Good results and features will. However, there may be enough cheap people and bottom feeders out there to sustain you. And then there’s the fine print “...you’re limited to 10 qualifying searches per day.” Thanks Blingo but no thanks.