It's interesting to know about Google's change of policy about directory submissions advice, and the main differences between the big web search engines; but this is only of limited relevance when looking forward to the future of this relatively new industry. If you're a serious SEO professional, you'll be more interested in prospective SEO: the general direction that the search engine industry is heading towards.
The future of SEO involves:
- Less focus on PageRank / link endorsement weight
- More focus on on-site / on-page factors
- More focus on age
- More focus spelling & grammar; language & linguistics
Must play safe
As a cat could be said to have nine lives; a webmaster could typically be said to have room for mistake, be it accidental or intentional. But search engines recently, not least Google, have had a tendency to dish out penalties including out-right bans. This is like the big dog coming along and taking all 9 lives of the cat in one bite, just because the fallible dog thinks he's not wrong.
Google then make is easy for webmasters to 'fess up and ask for forgiveness, and after my comment on Matt Cutts' Blog in February 2008 they've made it easier for partially-penalised domains to be reconsidered also (at one time, they provided reconsideration for "inclusion in the index", but this did not clearly satisfy those who are already included but with penalised rankings); and they've recently even made it similarly easy for webmasters to declare their innocence when in receipt of illogically-unleashed penalty, but it's probably a step-too-far to dish out that unfair penalty in the first place.
These trigger-happy algorithmic tendencies may encourange some downfall of the search engine giants, making room for newer players to deliver superior solutions.
