1. The Open Source Yellow Pages Will Emerge

Business listing data online has traditionally been harshly disjointed  Various sites have dissimilar business names, phone numbers, website URLs, hours of operations, services, etc.  The back away data suppliers like Localeze, InfoUSA & Acxiom have done a reasonable job of trying to become the source of truth for business listings, but eventually the world actually requires a single source for the so-called golden record for each business.  Twitter looks like it’s about to become that source.  It’s current purchase of MixerLabs and their GeoAPI product is the yellow pages API I have been whining about for the past year or so.  If this rolls out the way I believe it will, Twitter will now become the vital clearinghouse for a enormous portion of local data.  The data providers, yellow pages publishers, ad agencies will even now play a part, controlling what proprietary info they feed into the system, but pretty much any application that includes local businesses will use the Twitter system, so much so that if you aren’t using it, your product will seem lacking behind.  Mastering the inputs and outputs of this system will become a important differentiator for local marketers in ‘010.

2. GOOGLE

What in addition is there to say on this subject?  GOOGLE will carry on on its long march to local search domination.  More natural outcome will lead to more Maps results in more ways than ever before, enduring to put the organic squeeze on any sites that are not real local businesses.  The Favorite Places window sticker thing won’t do much for traffic but GOOG will send them out to more businesses just for the reason that they can.  Now that the Yelp deal may have passed GOOG will disclose that they are setting up a call center to aim SMB advertisers in a few markets as a examination further freaking out everybody else in local.  GOOG voice search on mobile will begin to show some serious growth.  Audio SEO aka Voice Search Optimization will be a minor development with enormous ramifications.  As I said last year, it’s a Google world and we all just search in it.

Ranking Tip: increase your business’ presence on Google Maps citation sources such as Panoramio, Flickr, Wikipedia & YouTube.  Be the first on your block to discover new sources and get a gold star

3. What’s Our Demand Media Strategy?

I nearly put this ahead of Google because while the Great GOOG will be where a lot of the act is, it seems like everyone I talk to is obsessed on the Demand Media strategy of producing content related on real demand in place of editorial judgment.  Look forward to see big brands developing huge amounts of content all over hot keywords blocking up the organic SERPs and social media sites.  This has been a traditional strategy used by spammers. The big dissimilarity here is that big companies with big budgets are beginning to play in this game churning out more content than ever before.  If you manage a company that offers cheap article writing in the Philippines, this could be good.
Ranking Tip: See Brent D Payne’s great presentation on How To Connect Journalism with the Greatest Possible Audience.

4. Attack of the Guides

Given that it’s getting tuff for yellow pages publishers to rank good for local queries, wait for to see a lot of how-to guides come out from the a variety of players in an effort to enlarge their “search footprint”™.  I expect within 3-6 months pretty much everybody is going to have a wedding guide, a home improvement guide, etc.

Ranking Tip:  Don’t fish where everyone else is.  Go after a relatively uncontested niche - maybe start with a funeral guide?

5. Invasion of the Lame Local Games

Foursquare and GoWalla have fascinated notice for creating games that have a practical local part  There is something very calm and futuro about this.  Problem is everybody is going to try and copy this because the potential is insanely vast.  So imagine an onslaught of local gaming lameness.
Darkhorse Tip: A company like Zynga has the potential to do something out of control with this concept which will totally take the industry by surprise.

6. AdSense for Local

Adsense do better on local search sites.  Large local search sites are some of the top local advertisers on Adsense.  They would relatively not give their $ to GOOG.  They have a lot of advertisers.  Why haven’t they done this up till now?
Strategy Tip: Companies like Localeze & Yext claim they are already on their ways to a system like this.  We’ll keep an eye on them.

7. Reputation Management Wars

It looks like all are  working on a reputation management system to assist SMBs get a control on how they are being accessible on pertinent sites across the Web. Merchant Circle, Marchex, GetListed, Palore have all moreover rolled out or announced efforts in this area.  Require to see big publishers and SMB ad sellers like ReachLocal, Webvisible, Yodle, etc. try to figure out how they can play in this space to develop more value for advertisers.

8. SMB SEO Budgets Will Increase Dramatically

A number of ill-advised souls are predicting that personalized search renders SEO outdated.  Bottom line: most SMBs don’t know what they are performing with search, are going mad because some spammer or the guy down the street outranks them, want to spend more time with their kids and are ready to hire someone to make the problem disappear.

9. GLBC Will Institute An Agency of Record User

There are all types of difficult reasons why Google Local Business Center does not permit for an “agency” user.  Google wants to dishearten mass spamming and so they want to force more businesses to maintain their own profile and really connect with the Google.  The best reply I heard from Google is that if businesses aren’t signing up on their own then that’s a problem with the product and they require to make better the product to get them to do so.  Expectantly this is the year that Google admits that most businesses just won’t do it on their own.

10. M&A Activity in Local Search Will Take Off

There’s a cause why  I have started consisting M&A services as element of my consulting work.  The Yelp/Google deal, the ReachLocal IPO, the Twitter/Mixerlabs deal - these events develop a growing sense that local search is starting to set - meaning that there are a set of services that are starting to show the capability to break away from the disjointed local search pack and have the potential to grasp comparatively large shares of their markets.  Wait for to see a domino effect with a number of large and small acquisitions over the next year.

11. SEO Consultants Will Become Better Known as Marketers

2009 looks like the year when a numerous SMBs woke up to the truth that SEO really existed and could be asignificant part of the marketing mix.  In 2010 more businesses are going to begin to understand that search and social media could be the main area of potential for their companies and they will dispense more resources into these channels.  As a outcome search marketers are going to take on superior roles helping drive complete marketing strategies.  SEOs will be the Na’vi 2010 - whatever that means.