It looks like everyone is publishing his or her predictions for 2007. We are going to jump on that bandwagon too. The reason is not that we have something to add to the great predictions and insights already written. The reason is we see the year 2007 as possibly the year that Web searching could advance to the next level.

Advances in Web search have not been clearly visible in the past year, but looking deeper, at least Google has done some very important improvements to their Web search engine. They are yet to make our wish for results sorted by date come through, but maybe they will do so in 2007. The Webmaster services they have introduced in 2006 are great improvements for anyone running a Web site and want it to be in the search index and following the guidelines set forth. The major search engines have agreed on using the same standard for sitemaps, which is a big improvement for Webmasters.

There are exciting times ahead in Web search and one search engine player that we will be watching closely is Ask.com. A new interface recently introduced, Ask X, is very promising.

New Web search engines have been popping up lately and some are in the pipes. Powerset.com is a natural language search engine that is yet to open up for general use, but what we have read in the news makes it very interesting.

Powerful server software to set up and run small vertical search engines is available to anyone at affordable prices. Some of the big players in Web search offer access to their API’s for Web developers to design new Web searching interfaces. This will bring us many new and exciting search tools and many new vertical search engines in 2007. Web searching based on user recommendations and collaboration will probably be the next big thing in Web search along with advances in search algorithms and artificial intelligence.

Our passion is Web searching. We enjoy keeping one eye on what is going on in the search industry and we get very excited each time we discover a new search engine or a search tool.  In the near future, we are going to publish short reviews of Web search engines and search tools and soon we are going to set up a new Web search tool for you to play with. Web search in millions of colors is our vision for the Web and we are going to add at least one color to the Web search flora.