Partly for fun and partly because I think there is value in going out on a limb from time to time, I’m trying my hand at some predictions on what is on the horizon for search & social in 2011. At the end of the year, I’ll of course take a look back and see how my predictions stacked up.

#1 – The influence of social signals and reputation on search rankings will become harder to ignore.

Google recently confirmed that signals from social media sites are being used as a search ranking factor. While a lot of SEOs seem intent on writing this off as a fad or a minor development, I beg to differ. Social signals may be used “relatively lightly” at this point, but they will continue to gain importance and visibillity in the search results over the course of 2011. Forward thinking SEOs and social media consultants will focus more on reputation in social media in an effort to better understand how to further “optimize” social media for maximum search benefit.

#2 – The relationship between Facebook and Bing will grow stronger.

At a time when the links between search and social are growing quickly, partnership is a winning combination for Bing and Facebook (especially while Google continues to stumble in the social space.) While Bing has been cautious in its rollout of liked search results, I’m willing to guess that we will see more and more instances of Facebook integration on Bing. Liked results will become commonplace, and the two will find other ways of leveraging one another (topic experts from Facebook appearing on Bing? More opportunities to share search results from Bing back to Facebook?)
I also wouldn’t be surprised to see some cooperation on the paid ads side. While Bing and Facebook each have their own ad-serving platform, they are more complementary than competitors. Why not offer users cross-platform ad serving through Microsoft AdCenter?

#3 – Search engines will further consolidate or obscure the long tail.

2010 brought two major changes on Google that could impact the long tail – the introduction of instant search, and the rollout of the new keyword tool (which eliminated “non-commercial” keyword suggestions and chopped off most of the long-tail results.) While we can argue about what impact (if any) instant search has had on the long tail to date, the changes to the keyword tool make Google’s intentions pretty clear.
It makes sense from a strategic perspective. On the paid search side, head and mid-tail search terms are generally more competitive, have higher CPCs, and as a result generate more revenue for the search engines. Conversely, giving advertisers access to a healthy long tail of search queries allows them extremely granular control and the ability to save a lot of money. It will be interesting to see if the engines make more subtle changes that impact the long tail in 2011.

#4 – Static content continues to die.

The release of Google’s Caffeine index really shook things up in 2010 – The old, definitive resource pages from authoritative domains that reliably ranked well were unseated by fresh, “living documents” riding on social buzz and recent links. While the Caffeine update may have come to the detriment of many sites (and the anger of many webmasters), Caffeine was only the beginning. The days when one piece of content would sit in first place indefinitely are over – all content now has a shelf life. In 2011, we will likely see more movement in favor of recent content and constantly evolving pages that are always being updated and curated.

I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments – what do you think will be big in 2011?