Posted by PhilNottingham

It’s the 1^st of January 2012. You've been inundated with well-wishing SMS messages from numbers you don't have saved. You got up late and have only just showered. More than likely, you’re unbearably hungover. Like many others you have just begrudgingly thought about remedying the sour taste in your mouth...

worked out how much you have consumed over the last few days...

before hastily working out how you can fix the consequences...

and wondered how to get rid of the faded, malting shrub which has engulfed your living room.

Although quaint and mildly amusing, the seasonal nature of these search trends was easily predicted. The same is not true for much of 2011, which turned out to be a year filled with of change, uncertainty and amazement. Below is a lighthearted rundown of 10 of the most surprising search industry happenings of last year.

Tales of the Unexpected

1. We're actually using a social network created by Google

Google+ finishes the year with a user base claimed to be around the 62 million mark, indicating that this time, they may have just got it right.

Through comprehensive Integration with existing Google profiles and aggressive marketing across the main Google platform, G+ appears to have hit the ground running, despite uncertainty about where it will fit into our current framework of social sharing and networking in the long term.

While 2010 saw the announcement, launch and immediate critical dismissal of the ill-fated Google Buzz, Google+ spent most of 2011 being taunted, lauded and speculatively compared with Facebook in varying degrees of favourable and unfavourable comment. It seemed as if the world, uncontent with continuously arguing over the merits of differing smartphone operating systems, wanted nothing more than to see two digital networking platforms wage an all-out bloody battle against each other -- like some sort of contemporary Tron that wasn't as terrible as Tron Legacy.

As it turns out, G+ ends the year in an uncertain, but interesting territory; occupying a space somewhere between the open, public broadcast realm of Twitter and the restricted, personal networking of Facebook.

Negatively....Google+'s openness, its complex encircling system and the ability to encircle people without a G+ account, means it lacks the feelings of control and privacy valued in Facebook while offering fairly disparate and confusing methods of locating individuals you may wish to connect with. Going forward, we may find that actually, the vast majority of people don't see a great deal of value in the Circles system - finding fragmented and factional communication a level of complexity above their requirements.

Positively...Google+ pages for businesses and public figures could turn out to be incredibly valuable, as writers vie for rel="author" attribution and companies compete for ever expanding rich snippet opportunities. The +1 sharing system could herald the marriage of search and social, especially if social sharing data in SERPs begins to dramatically alter CTR. Google+ hangouts offer a beautifully designed feature which should really have been available on Facebook and the Circles system has merit for informal interaction across real-life companies and organisations. In the end, it may be that the smaller elements of Google+ become its ultimate virtue -- succeeding to unite presences across the web; acting as a résumé for an individual's personal and professional web activity.

2. MC Hammer announced the launch of a search Engine

Of all the high profile entrepreneurs one could have foreseen staking interest and venture capital in a search start-up - low down on the list was early 90's rapper and reality TV star - MC Hammer. Wiredoo, currently in pre-beta is planned to be a deep search engine - offering uses related information about their search query - as well as results. In 2012, we should see Wiredoo beta launched alongside Vanilla Ice's new social network - Stop, Collaborate & Listen.

3. Google crept in Flight Search and Hotel Search

In another blow to small-time affiliates, Google sneakily crept in their own flight and hotel information, allowing users to compare prices, dates and quotes without having to leave SERPs.

While worrying many SEOs, with the view that Google is moving into a place of monopolistic power with regards to consumer choice; the feature was generally welcomed by users who found it helpful, accurate and valuable. In 2012, we may see Google making the foray into more temporal searches, such as train times, museum opening hours and TV listings. Google Shopping will probably be given a further revamp in 2012.

4. Adobe abandoned development on Flash Player for Mobile Devices

Adobe realised that Flash was unlikely to stand strong in the future; with the expanding war on site-speed, lack of iOS compatibility and YouTube shift towards HTML5 amongst a multitude of factors. Seeing the writing on the wall, Adobe made the brave move to lose some staff and shift their focus towards HTML5 and AIR development, in order to maintain relevancy in an increasingly mobile internet space. Adobe Edge, HTML5 & CSS3 content creation software has been released in preview mode.

In 2012, we'll now see an enormous collective push towards providing exciting, search-engine friendly HTML5 & CSS3 content - with all major parties pulling in broadly similar directions. Now is the time to revamp any legacy Flash content and get on-board the HTML5 train.

5. Microsoft fixed Internet Explorer (sort of)

The haunting presences of archaic IE versions were offered an exorcism in 2011, after Microsoft announced that it would bring auto-update to IE. Starting in Brazil and Australia early this year, IE updates will be included within the wider Windows Update system. Those with auto-update on will be automatically upgraded to IE9. Assuming success in Brazil and Aus, the updates will likely roll out progressively to the rest of the world, allowing us to finally get really creative with all that nice HMTL5 & CSS3 business without worrying too much about old browser compatibility. On the downside, Internet Explorer will probably still be rubbish throughout 2012.

When this auto-update system comes into full force, we can expect complaints from thousands of IT and software companies who have made a good living out of offering pop-up blockers and Internet security systems. The United Kingdom Civil Service will also likely make some fuss as in a feat of unprecedented irony, they have so far refused to allow staff to use anything other than IE6 because of "security concerns".

6. Anonymous took down Visa.

Everyone's favourite V for Vendetta fans made a quite astonishing display of their capabilities in 2011, as they attacked both Mastercard and Visa under what was termed "Operation Payback" - a campaign to target firms the organisations viewed as being against Wiki-leaks. Who knows what we could see from this group in 2012....

7. Apple's voice search was xenophobic

Although pundits were expecting voice integration with the iPhone following Apple's purchase of Siri back in 2010, few expected it to make the huge leap above Google voice search into passive aggressive comments and sarcastic humour. Seemingly unable to effectively decipher the majority of non-north American accents, Siri patronisingly asks most Scottish people to repeat their request and currently refuses to give local search data outside of the US. In 2012, we might see a tempering of Siri's nationalistic bias, with yelp powered local search data offered in Europe and around the world. We'll also likely see Android produce a similar functionality for their handsets - perhaps with a more liberal, multicultural vibe.

8. Exact match domains became more powerful

Despite what i think will be a general consensus that the quality of Google SERPs improved dramatically over the past year, exact match domain names seemed to be ranking better and appearing in greater number, even for extremely competitive keywords.

I'm looking at you cheappackageholidays.co.uk

This was, of course, extremely frustrating for those of us who hold a romantic vision of a world where spammy tactics are redundant and SEOs, clad entirely in white, run around meadows in harmony with Google; gaily laughing at the fools from paid-seo-friendly-links.com.

While we can assume and hope that this problem will eventually get fixed, we can take solace in the introduction of rich snippets and schema.org which also happened this past year - giving genuinely good sites another way to prove their worth in the SERPs.

9. Google stopped providing keyword referral data for logged in users

To the sounds of justified indignation and uproar from the SEO community, Google announced they would be blocking keyword referral information in Google Analytics for logged in users.

Will this affect the day-to-day SEO? I'm not sure. But we'll have to sit tight in 2012 in case any other nasty surprises come our way.

10. Digg fell to insignificancy while Reddit went exponential

Russ Jones spoke about the Fall of Digg and the rise of Reddit at his 2011 Linklove presentation, but few could have predicted how right on the money he was. As we move into 2012, Google Trends shows Reddit on an almost exponential rise while Digg trickles out to nothing.