Archive: December, 2008

2008 started on a promising note however it quickly descended into a chaotic nightmare that can easily be characterized as the harshest, stupidest, good-for-no-one, waste of a year in the short history of search. 2008 sucked on virtually every level imaginable. The past twelve months have produced a few triumphant highlights but they are grossly over-shadowed by a slew of extraordinarily unfortunate events. Entering the last two weeks of the year, conditions in the search marketing industry are ripe for contrition, a dark and unkempt path we’ve never traveled down before.

The extraordinary events of the past year drained a lot of life and talent out of the industry. Ironically, these events happened just at a time when the search and digital marketing sectors are being widely considered and understood by the greater advertising industry. Having managed to grow the search marketing sector from what was essentially a miscellaneous line-item on corporate marketing budgets to a multi-billion dollar advertising industry, 2008 and 2009 were supposed to be the hyper-breakthrough years. Now the industry feels like it is stuck at the nozzle of an aerosol canister with enormous propellant force behind us but stopped by an untimely blockage near the top of the tube.