As Bruce Clay explained to WebProNews, the changes Panda brought were significant to the search industry. However, overall, he thinks the quality of Google’s search results have improved. That said, Clay told us that we likely haven’t seen the end of Panda and that it has the potential to get bigger and meaner.

Social media and local search also played important roles in search over the year. Although the advent of Google+ is obviously noteworthy, Clay said that it would become more integrated with search over time, especially in regards to local search.

Going forward, he believes that SEO will become much harder. In addition, he said that SEO, social, conversion rate optimization, PPC, and other search marketing elements will, instead of being separate areas of expertise, will all fall under the broad title of Internet marketing. In other words, SEOs will also have be experts in social media and vice versa.

How have the search events of 2011 impacted you and your business? Let us know.

For starters, he discussed the battle among the search engines. Although Yahoo and Microsoft have partnered in a joint search effort, Yahoo claims it is applying a different algorithm to Bing’s index, which would mean different search results for Yahoo users. Even if this is the case, Clay believes that users will continually shift toward Bing.

Ask is no longer a player in the search space, but Blekko is in. However, Clay does not believe that it will emerge as a strong competitor for Google or Bing.

Moving on to Google, the search veteran predicted that Google would become a local search engine in 2 years. Local is definitely on the rise, especially since more money can be made in it. For example, local regions can bid on national terms such as shoes. By doing this, they have the potential to increase their ROI. If this happens, they are more likely to spend more money on their PPC campaigns, which means more money for Google in the long run.

“You either play in the local space… or you’re not going to get clicks even if you’re #1,” Clay points out.

He also talks about Google News and how he believes that it will be as big as local is now. He even predicted that Google News would be a viable competitor to major news outlets such as CNN and Fox News.

“I don’t believe we’re going to get into a situation where Google’s going to pass on an opportunity to control the flow of news,” he said.

Getting into social media, Clay made the statement that likes are the new links. Because social is becoming such a big part of search, he believes that likes, referrals, and recommendations will be factored into the ranking algorithm that search engines use. If this happens, you can expect to see new forms of spam.

Only time will tell if these predictions will come about, but the one thing that is certain is that it’s going to be a very interesting time in the search industry.

In this interview, he talks to WebProNews about how Google is getting more and more information on a regional level, such as social feedback. As a result, he believes that in 3-5 years, Google News will be as big as local is now.

He even went one step further and predicted that Google News would be a viable contender against major news outlets like CNN and Fox News.

“I don’t believe we’re going to get into a situation where Google’s going to pass on an opportunity to control the flow of news,” he said.

The search and advertising giant already has tremendous influence on the Web, but it would have even more if it controlled news content. If Google did, in fact, take over the news space, Clay said, “it could be a very interesting time,” especially with Google involved with a TV service as well.

He feels so strongly that this prediction will actually happen that he is already developing products based on the possibilities. Do you see Google taking over news?

To learn more about Bruce Clay’s predictions, watch the full interview.

One of the biggest changes was the Yahoo-Microsoft search partnership. Although Yahoo still claims to be applying a slightly different algorithm to Bing‘s index, Clay believes that there will be a continual shift toward Bing. Google has steadily been a strong a leader in search, but the combined market share of Yahoo and Bing of approximately 30 percent is a powerful number that could cause some competition for the search giant.

When comparing the search engines to Web browsers, Clay said, “I think things shift, and I think that the leader is subject to change if they do things that the public doesn’t like.”

Another change that recently occurred was Ask’s decision to pull out of the search business. Clay pointed out that because Ask was not able to make an impact on the market, this decision would have a very minimal effect on the industry.

Although Ask is out, there is a new search engine on the scene called Blekko that wants to be part of the game. WebProNews recently spoke with its CEO and Co-founder Rich Skrenta who said that their goal was to the third search engine. While Clay believes Blekko is doing many things right, he doesn’t think that it will be the third search engine.

“You’d be a fool to ignore them. I just don’t know that a person that is a novice searcher is going to particularly know to go there,” he said.

He recommends waiting six months and seeing where it is at that point.

As new search engines emerge and join the battle, who will survive this search engine battle?

To learn more about Bruce Clay’s predictions, watch the full interview.

In this video, Clay suggests that likes, referrals, and recommendations will become major part of all the ranking algorithms used by search engines. You can see that the search engines are already very interested in this kind of social data, from Bing’s deal with Facebook to Google’s desire of Facebook’s data.

It’s going to be interesting to see just how big a role likes and other social interactions play in search overall, going forward. You can expect new kinds of spam and manipulation. Google and the other search engines will have their hands full trying to combat those hoping to game the system. The social networks will have their hands full as well.

Likes are already coveted by content providers all over the web. Listen to what Bruce Clay has to say about this and where the industry is heading.

To learn more about Bruce Clay’s predictions, watch the full interview.

He has recently conducted a lot of research pertaining to local. From it, he has found that 30 percent of all retailers show some type of local aspect in search results. He has also noticed that the search results vary when the location is changed even when the query is not location-specific.

“Clearly, Google is using the geolocation of the searcher to bias the search results,” he said.

Although these factors are important in this shift toward local, money seems to be the biggest motivator. For example, there are only so many people who can bid on a national term such shoes. However, every local region can bid on the term. If users geotarget, their ROI will increase. As people make more money following this principle, they will be more apt to spend further money on their PPC campaign, which, of course, means Google would make more money.

For all these reasons, Clay emphasizes the importance of getting involved in local.

“You either play in the local space… or you’re not going to get clicks even if you’re #1,” he points out.

As this shift occurs, he believes that there will be a massive influx of sites. In addition, he thinks that people will try to deceive SEOs, create new forms of spam, and more. In terms of brands, Clay said that people that have had a large brand presence would now realize that their brand would not be very effective with all the new local sites competing for the same generic brand.

He also adds, “The only way Google can maintain relevancy and allow those sites on the Web is to emphasize local even more.”

Do you agree with Bruce Clay’s prediction about Google turning into a local search engine?

To learn more about Bruce Clay’s predictions, watch the full interview.

Earlier this week, the companies also gave advertisers the go ahead to start transitioning from Yahoo search ads to Microsoft Bing search ads. As this transition begins to unfold, we can start to see what some of the changes will be and how they might impact the future of search.

From a visual perspective, Yahoo Search still looks the same but has a small “Powered by Bing” at the bottom of the results page. Another aspect worth noting is that the two companies combined own approximately 28 percent of the search market, according to comScore’s July search report.

Long time search marketing expert Bruce Clay has also noticed some interesting findings regarding SEO and the new Yahoo search. He tells WebProNews that, based upon information from Yahoo’s API team, the company intends to use Bing’s index but apply a slightly different algorithm to it. In other words, the search engines will still produce different search results. From this information, Clay believes that users will still see value in Yahoo search.

The paid search transition, on the other hand, could have a more dramatic impact. Bing has been very effective in pay per click, and as a result, Clays says it offers a high click through rate.

“I would have a tendency to think that Bing advertising will see many, many more people using it,” he points out.

Although the companies would like to have the paid search transition completed by October, they have said it could be delayed if they see a potential interference with this year’s holiday season.

Regardless of what other changes will come as this transition is fully rolled out, there is no doubt that it will be marked as a turning point in the search and advertising industry. Interestingly, Clay calls these latest developments a “resurrection” of the second and third search engines. Do you agree?

First of all, although social is growing in popularity and value, Clay says it is still hard to determine the extent of its impact on search. Both people and businesses are still learning how to use it. He believes there are two different camps on social. The first is similar to PPC since users can leverage ads in their social networks. This way can be thought of as an ad network, and it allows users to drive traffic and raise awareness.

He classifies the second camp as being closer to SEO since it can be used to encourage people to link to you. In addition, it can be used for reputation management. Just as SEO and PPC are more effective together, using both camps of social media are equally important. He says marketers will miss out on valuable opportunities if they do not utilize social media.

Linking is another area that has changed. As Clay discusses, there are several ways to do links such as stimulating people socially, begging for links, and being a link magnet. Social media is tied to the aforementioned stimulating people for links and also to link begging, since it could provide a target through a social relationship. As he points out, link magnets are the best method because marketers create great content that people want to link to.

Although link networks are also included in linking practices, Clay believes they could become a serious problem. These networks allow one user or company to have some level of control over a group of different sites. Although he has no direct inclination from Google, he believes the search giant will crack down on this practice. He thinks Google has no choice but to either lighten up on its standards, which he believes is wrong, or enforce stronger regulation. If link networks were eliminated, he says there would be a “massive change in the linking structure and rankings.”

In regards to changes in search results, Clay recalls that Google offers more options, maps, and more in the SERPs. He predicts that searchers will be able to selectively turn on live feeds and engagements objects (video, images, etc.). Google has also made efforts pertaining to search intent and behavior. With linking practices changing as well, he believes we will see many new developments in search results. Additionally, he says these changes will continue and traditional SEO will lose its effectiveness.

Are you accommodating these changes?

In the early days, Clay says SEO was easy. He goes on to say that it was somewhat defined even 5 years ago, but social, mobile, and local are not defined at all. Now, SEO is more difficult and targeted and will get even harder over time. He calls the top 3 search results the new first page.

“You can’t be good at SEO, you have to be great,” says Clay.

In the next 18 months, he believes the hottest topics in SEO circles will be local, social media, conversions, and somewhat surprisingly, only some discussion about mobile. The reason for this lack of mobile discussion is because people do not like the mobile browser.

Clay thinks the mobile device will become an operating system with the ability to connect apps directly to the Web, which would eliminate the need for a browser. Although he believes a “find” app will be dominant over a search app, he doesn’t believe that mobile will replace search.

In regards to Google’s recent MayDay update, Clay says he saw nothing but good results for sites that optimized for the long tail. While sites that had casual long tail results lost some traffic, he pointed out that it didn’t impact their conversions.

Google Caffeine is another update that has been receiving a lot of attention of late and Clay had a lot to share about it as well. Last year, Google said that it was rolling Caffeine out to one data center and would slowly roll it out to the others. After having a conversation with Google’s Matt Cutts, Clay believes Caffeine is completely rolled out now but just not in 100 percent of the queries.

He goes on to say that advantages of Caffeine are the near real-time page index updates and increased spam filters. In addition, he says there are several behind-the-scenes factors that make it even more interesting. Although Google has not officially announced it, users can now buy Unicode characters in urls and the search engine supports it.

He also brings up a point about how Google recently said that it has 200 variables in the algorithm. As a result, search results were slower and behavioral search was penalized. Moving forward, Clay believes that multiple disjointed queries will determine search results but says it can’t be done without a faster index.

One of the big details that Google has emphasized about Caffeine is its faster index. According to Clay, if behavioral search works, PPC ads will be better and more targeted, which means that ROI will increase. As the ROI increases, the bid will also increase, which would ultimately generate more revenue for Google. All that said, the searchers would win as well since they would be getting better results.

Clay has given us a lot to think about. How do you feel about his projections?

As she tells WebProNews, there were many new faces at the show anxious to learn about SEO. Incidentally, she says that the majority of these people were small businesses.

Based upon the many questions posed to Bruce Clay Inc., among the most popular were questions regarding mobile and PPC. Poole says people do not truly grasp how much SEO can help them.

First of all, small businesses do not always realize that they are competing with businesses with large budgets. Small businesses naturally have small budgets, but they need to provide the same level of optimization as their competition in order to adequately compete.

Secondly, small businesses think that they only need to do local search optimization. Clay points out that, just because a business is small and local, doesn’t mean that it doesn’t need to fix its entire website. He says:

“No matter what, the work is pretty much the same. No matter how you want to cut it, SEO is SEO.”

Small businesses still have to do technical work, build links, provide good and relevant content, and demonstrate that they are experts in their field. To help small businesses with their local efforts, the search engines offer many tools to assist them, such as maps.

At a local level, Clay says businesses need links from other people and businesses in their same region. In addition, the content should be specific and localized. However, if a business wants to rank internationally, then it needs to have links from other countries.

Up to this point, there has not been an efficient means for answering that question. As a result, SEOs were hesitant to advise clients on the importance of Ask. Clay says search engines such as Google rose in popularity because “they embraced the SEO community.”

Since Microsoft and Yahoo reached a search agreement, Ask has, by default, moved up from the #4 search engine to the #3 search engine. Clay believes that upon the API release, SEOs will view Ask differently, which could potentially increase the search engine’s market share.

“The underdog always wins, unless the underdog is biting you,” said Clay.

He says links were not important then and PPC was not nearly as competitive as it is now. In 1996, users would scan many pages of search results, but now they hardly go past page 1. Overall, the entire search industry has become more competitive. This is due to several reasons including the additional options with social media and the fact that searchers have become savvier.

Bruce says this “evolution” of the industry has brought about improvements, but the downside is that search has become more complex and technical. As search develops, these trends are expected to increase.

As newcomers embrace SEO, Bruce has noticed that they fail to dig deep into the technical and complex side of SEO and he foresees this as a problem. Additionally, while social media integration into SEO will increase over time, Bruce says its purpose has to be better determined.

How have you seen the search industry change? How do you expect it to change in the future?

Mike McDonald sat down with him for another interview at Search Engine Strategies, NY, and picked his brain about that and some other things.

Bruce talks about some tools he has that actually show some of the things he predicted are actually happening. For example, one tool lets you look at results seen as they would from other locations, which are often varied. For example, a Search Engine Optimization professional could look at a query from LA as if it had actually originated in New York.

Bruce says he’s seeing behavioral search everywhere on Google, and it is not dependent on whether or not you are logged in. He also talks about why SEOs have to be careful.

Eventually the subject shifts to social media. Bruce sees Twitter as a communication tool, but has trouble defining the service completely at this point. He says it could be a replacement for the press release. It’s good to communicate to people who would potentially link to you, but not necessarily for the direct links themselves.

He talks about how companies have a hard time grasping even that “online” is important, let alone Twitter. Top-level executives often are still wrapping their minds around search, which is measurable, and have a hard time justifying putting much time and energy into social media, which is not so measurable.

He says it’s like a poker game. It’s either “all or nothing, but every hand is all in or fold.” Regarding social media, Bruce says, “It’s a leap of faith.”

In the above video from SES Chicago, Bruce clarifies his bold statement.

“There is always going to be a reason to have ranking.”

With all of Google’s efforts to further personalization and localization, SEOs need to focus on the real objective. According to Bruce, this SEO objective is improving or increasing the profitability of the client.

In 2009, Bruce predicts that we will see an evolution toward traffic action and ultimately, return on investment (ROI) as the measurements of success for an SEO program. Clients want a lot of traffic and they will realize that it brings them a lot of ROI.

Bruce explains 2 new tools that he has created to help marketers better understand this objective. The toolbar is designed to literally modify the results of a Google search to provide demographical data. The second tool is a keyword research tool that pulls the exact API’s from a Google or MSN search for a given list of keywords. Bruce is working with Yahoo to make this tool accessible for Yahoo searches as well.

Both these tools are free and are projected to be public at the end of this month. Bruce points out that these tools are beneficial because marketers need this information and the tools help them to reach their specific target market and understand their true statistics.

Also, be sure to look for Bruce’s all-in-one Search Engine Optimization for Dummies book that is set for release in March.