I feel 2004 is going to be a great year...! There is much afoot and here are some predictions of things to come:

Several SEO/SEM and marketing organizations will appear or re-appear and a few will diminish.

Search engine and directory (SED) operators will come to realize that just being a member of a SEO organization does not serve their purposes very well. Look for at lease one SED organization to attempt to serve this market.

There will be 2-3 new choices for SEO keyword research. At least one will be free and paid for via advertising.

A very large software company will FINALLY enter the search marketplace, but initial efforts will garner more AOL users than Google eyeballs. They may have to resort to paying users for every search they do, but we'll have to see...

Some exciting little search players will blossom this year. Most you don't even know exist, but they are causing some buzz in the industry and if you are in the industry and have not heard, it may be because you are running in the wrong circles.

The technology that will drive these companies to the front are partner distribution networks, distributed crawling, automated/manual indexing and editing of listings, copycat implementation of text ads like the leader, and networking among SEDs that will increase search inventory while DECREASING work load. Yes, distributed submissions. Submit once and publish on many.

So, how much of all this is BS, dreaming, and some inside information? Well, we'll have to wait and see what comes to pass...

(hris