2006 has been the most interesting year in the past decade, at least for the search marketing sector. So many things have changed over the past twelve months it is sometimes difficult to see the forest for the individual trees found in that forest. Search has expanded as a function in more ways this year than in the ten previous ones. In turn, the search marketing industry has also expanded to offer services for the expanding number of search applications. Google is getting into facilitating context based advertising for both print and radio. So what does SEARCH mean these days?

A number of new search related venues established their presence this year including Social search (MySpace, Linked-In, FaceBook, etc…), Image search (Flickr, Pixsy), video search (YouTube) are the most well known of a multitude of information distribution platforms that have a direct impact on the business of search marketing. Other examples include the community-influenced news site Digg and RSS-fed information propagators like the blog-roll at Searchbrains.com. Mobile search is thought to be ready to break-through into the North American market sometime in 2007.

According to Danny Sullivan’s keynote speeches at both SES Chicago and PubCon Las Vegas,

“Search is going to be the idea that you’re searching for anything, anywhere, on any kind of device. Search is colliding with all sorts of other things.” source: clickz – Search Converges

Search is not necessarily colliding with other things as much as it is being integrated as a necessary part of virtually every other information application. With more things to find online, Where search as a function goes, the search marketing community will naturally follow. As the early adopters gravitate towards new niches, another interesting fragmentation of the search marketing sector appears underway as interest turns to specialization. A similar thing happened a few years ago when many in the early SEO community moved towards PPC services, eventually developing highly specialized SEM shops.

Discussion in the latter part of 2006 has focused on finding ways to incorporate separate marketing opportunities offered by the various platforms into a multi-faceted message machine. For instance, a YouTube video of a local bed and breakfast could be mentioned on a travel agent’s destination review blog. Local images drawn from the Flickr account of the bed and breakfast owner could punctuate the page. The travel agent’s blog could, in turn, share that page of content, images, video and all, with dozens, hundreds or even thousands of other travel related blogs. While all this is happening off to the side of the actual commercial website run by that bed and breakfast, which should still be placing in the Top10 under relevant keyword phrases, the effort is designed to drive traffic to that business website. Thinking like this will get one a phone call from Madison Ave., which brings up another interesting shift in search marketing.

If 2006 was the year of the mash-up collision, 2007 is bound to be the year of the clean-up as the talents of the search marketing industry are used to both educate and compliment those found in the traditional advertising industry. Danny is absolutely right when he implies search is everything.