The Future of Search Engines and Their Optimization

I’m currently working in a job where I’ve been asked to be the tech resource for our SEO efforts. Doing a bunch of reading, I’ve pretty much painted a picture of the future. I’m just waiting for it to become true. I’m just magic like that. Here’s my 7 predictions for search engines in the next decade or two:

1. Engines will know the proper context of what you’re searching for. If you say “Afghan,” they’ll know if you mean the dog, rug, or are referring to the people. Maybe because you tell them, or because they can divine it from your other search keywords.
2. Engines will reach a level where they’re nearly as good as a human-edited directory.
3. Being as nearly good as a human-edited directory, if all you do is sell goods or services, your site will not be in the organic search results. Why? It doesn’t provide any new or unique information, and you’re making money on it. By giving a link to your site for free, they make no money. They’ll demand a cut of your money for being your advertising agent. Given the choice between paying a nominal fee to be listed in the ads, or not be shown ever, you’ll pay the nominal fee.
4. The only way to reach customers via SERPs will be to buy advertising. Context-sensitive ads, adsense, banner ads, whatever. You will no longer get free advertising from search engines.
5. The job of SEO “Experts” will be to get your site classified as non-commercial, even if it makes money, so you show up in organic results
6. There will be a huge gray area surrounding mixed commercial/informational sources. For example, Amazon.com has extra product pictures, editorial reviews, track and chapter listings, exerpts, user reviews, etc. Why some sites like this get classified as informational and some as purely commercial will be a big point of contention.
7. It could happen that instead of forcing you to maintain an ad bank of thousands of keywords to index all your products, engines will charge commercial sites a listing fee — much like the way you pay to get in a phone book or direct mailer. They’ll guarantee your site shows up in the organic SERPs for a price, but not guarantee where it shows up. The price will be high enough that spammers can’t register en masse to flood the market and still make a profit, but low enough that it doesn’t prohibit startups. The price will depend on what products or services are being offered