In the stock market, analysts and traders buy, sell and trade shares in companies based on the speculation of future earnings or declines. Stock pickers attempt to determine which investments will rise and fall based on publicly available information. Slate magazine recently pointed out that even the best stock pickers, however, are generally terrible at beating the market as a whole over the long term.

However, we in search have our own market from which to pick and choose rising stars - the daily demand for search queries. It's strange to me that this topic is so rarely discussed and that so few individuals in the search world talk about the power of "predictively picking keywords." In the search market, there's no rules against insider trading - if you know that ABC is running a special about whatever happened to Marianne from Gilligan's Island on Sunday, writing a blog entry or creating a landing page for that phrase isn't "insider trading," it's just smart keyword targeting. Similiarly, there's almost no downside to being wrong - you may waste a half hour putting together some content, but you won't lose money and even the worst predictions may pay off in the future.

If, as a savvy website operator or search marketer, you can anticipate trends in your field (or any field) from a query perspective, you stand to be exceptionally successful. First to market with a great piece of content on a subject can often mean that your resource becomes the reference "source" for future content pieces, meaning you can maintain the top position simply by being first (and thorough).

Some solid examples include creating pages or sites for:

• New television shows
• New books or films
• Artists whose popularity is rising (in any field)
• Current events
• Geographies that receive attention (particularly smaller towns, landmarks, etc.)
• Historical references or events
• New technologies or products

Has anyone played the keyword query prediction market lately? Any big ones to show for it? Please feel free to link out to references or examples of successes.