Posts About ‘predictions’

The Perils of Predicting the Internet

Wizard

Forecasting the future is a difficult path to tread. Predictions are often met with a healthy dose of cynicism, and there is no lack of critics if your carefully calculated forecasts turn out to be wrong. And yet people crave to know what the future holds. Despite its perils, forecasting is one of the most interesting parts of my job, and why I love being an analyst.

The basic premise of forecasting is that stuff happens in repeatable patterns. By looking at historical trends of what has happened in the past, it’s possible to predict what will happen in the future. Therefore, if March has been the biggest month of the year for ISA searches for the last three years (and it has) then it makes sense that next March will be the biggest month for ISA searches in 2013. (more…)

Thinks looking good for search marketers but: It’s all about the (mobile) dialogue

A research performed by the Dutch Dialogue Marketing Association shows that things are looking good for search marketers, much more money will be spent on search in 2010. The research shows its all about the dialogue, search and mobile.

The research is a quarterly questionnaire amongst the members of the DDMA. The results give us a nice insights in which direction the marketers believe the industry is going. We can learn and benefit from that. (more…)

Predictions for 2010, how did we do?

2010-predictions

First of all: Happy New Year! I hope 2011 will be the best year we have all ever seen.

2011 has started. It’s the first Monday of the New Year and many of us are starting the New Year fresh with good resolutions. And a new year also means you can get yourself (mentally) ready for a lot, and I mean a lot, posts on almost every site predicting the future of search and social in 2011. After all, every self-respecting blog is making these predictions.

Why? Well for one because its ‘easy’ content, secondly it might be a link worthy article (I’m linking to many of them in this post) and third, it’s always fun to look into a Crystal Ball and predict the future.

The thing is with these posts, hardly anyone dares to look at them again 12 months after they were published. How did we do in the predictions? Did we really have an idea of what was going to happen? Or did the industry caught us by surprise? Time to take a look. Note: I can’t talk about every prediction made out there, there were too many, but I collected some interesting ones. (more…)