A New Page - What Next for Google?
Larry Page – you know, the guy PageRank was named after – is back in charge of Google. Eric Schmidt, who always planned to leave (as revealed in a blog post around Christmas 2010), has handed over his duties to Larry, and he seemed very happy about it as he tweeted: “Day-to-day adult supervision no longer needed!”
But did he mean for himself or for Google? Either way, there’s another new era at the top for Google headed by the same old faces. Page has been described as ‘intense’, and we can’t help fantasising that there might be some kind of ‘Kenny Dalglish effect’ taking place behind the scenes!
The reality though is that 2011 is there for Google to mould as it sees fit, and the decisions the company decided to take in regard to search and SEO may potentially have something of a ripple effect in the years ahead. Google needs to retain its investors and work on local SEO to stop them taking their investments down the lucrative social media path. PPC and other current services also need refining. Page’s intensity and enthusiasm for what has been a massive part of his life will be crucial when strategising and planning ahead.
The next couple of months are going to be rocky in a legal sense, with Spain and Germany challenging Google in court over privacy laws and the antitrust investigation the company faces in Europe about them allegedly cross-promoting their own services on the SERPs.
New ideas take time to implement anyway, so we reckon we’ll have seen and heard a lot more about what Google plans to do by the second quarter of the year. In a more practical sense, and requiring Page’s immediate attention, is the problem of spam and people exploiting their sites through unethical SEO.
So, a new year and a new dynamic at the world’s largest search engine. What will the year ahead bring for search marketing? We're not sure, but we’re sure it’ll be an interesting one.
