As we pull up on the end of 2010, it’s kind of hard to tag this year to one monumental moment in SEO. This is simply because so many other things occurred in the industry.

The ongoing Google/Facebook spat saw both sides releasing updates and improvements and redesigns, etc. throughout the latter half of the year. Is Google Instant Previews really more important than Facebook Places? Only time will tell.

So what’s up for 2011? Only time will tell, but one area of SEO that was very busy this year– and really didn’t get that much press – may be the key to what will be huge next year.

The topic? The ongoing development of new search engines.

Sure, the idea sounds like a “better mousetrap” situation. But this year the entries into the search market were not announcing they were trying to outdo Google or Bing, but simply giving people more particular alternatives.

2010 saw four distinctly different attempts to providing something new. We feel they deserve comparison and critique, since they are undoubtedly shooting to be big players in the coming year:

Quora: The first offering into the search engine arena this year was billed in the press as a type of search engine, but billed itself as an online knowledge market. Quora doesn’t so much help you find information as much as it lets you ask questions, which other Quora users can answer or not, depending on whether they know the answer.

Advantages: If someone has answered a question in the ballpark of the answer you chose, you might find the information you need.

Disadvantages: While probably millions of questions have been posed, very few answers seem to exist so far on Quora. It does not appear to be catching on. 2011 will be the do or die year for the big Q.

Swingly: Hot on the heels of Quora came Swingly, a search engine that takes answering questions seriously. While it might best be described as a spiffed-up version of Ask.com, its advantage is that it has gathered together more than 100 billion question and answer pairs of information. All of the info provided in a Swingly question is accessed from other web sources, like a traditional search engine.

Advantages: Swingly can offer answers to virtually any fact-based question in a flash. By paring down the search parameters, the answers provided can be extremely succinct. For example, you can ask, “When did Eddie Mathews hit his 500th home run?” and Swingly will produce a result for a page that lists that information (FYI, it was July 14, 1967, one year to the day before his former teammate Hank Aaron would do the same thing).

Disadvantages: Swingly is NOT very good at all with speculative or opinion-based questions. Questions starting with the word “Did” (such as, Did Marilyn Monroe ever star in a movie with Judy Garland?) merely pull up as many questions as it can answer about the subject, regardless of the question you asked. It s layout is also a bit confusing. To access one of the pages containing the information you need, you must click on the red URL in each result, rather than the equally clickable question you just asked, which sends you to a Swingly 404. This is a bit confusing.

Blekko: November brought Blekko, the “slashtag” search engine. Blekko invites the user to “slash” search, literally, by breaking down search queries using a slash tag. In so doing, Blekko can categorize your search better than others.

For example, if you want to look at political websites that appeal mostly to conservatives, you can enter “political/conservative” and the first results to come up are for Fox News. Type “political/liberal” on the other hand, and results for more liberal sites appear (Washington Monthly, Huffington Post, etc.)

Advantages: Blekko is capable of searching by categorical breakdown, as opposed to simply raw terms that have a page in common. This is why you can pull up conservative or liberal pages, for example, as opposed to just pages with those words on them.

Disadvantages: Blekko is amazingly “geeky.” Studies show that people don’t want to have to add an action (separate terms by anything other than a comma) in order to get results. By adding a task before getting a result, Blekko leaves impatient searchers behind. Search-obsessed people, however, find Blekko to be fascinating. Comments abound where SEO specialists call it “my favorite search engine,” “better than Google,” etc. That alone should tell Blekko something.

Qwiki: The latest addition to the search engine field, Qwiki is currently in Alpha testing (go to Qwiki.com to get on their troubleshooter list), but is certainly the most interesting new entry in the search market. If you haven’t seen Qwiki yet, you have to hand it to its developers – they’re shooting for something different.

And it certainly is; enter a term into the search window (Qwiki says there are 2,000 entries at the moment, but experimenting with it implies if it’s in Wikipedia, you’ll get results), and you’re treated to a 30-second, illustrated and narrated slide show, complete with a scrolling script of what is being read. You are then provided with a list of obvious places to find more information about the subject of the search (Google, Facebook, etc.). Photographs are pulled from various sites to better illustrate the paragraphs that the electronic voice reads to you.

Advantages: It sure is fun! It’s easy to see how Qwiki could come in handy if you’re looking for a term with several possible meanings, and you want to see whether or not you’ve found the right information. Qwiki should prove to be very popular in schools.

Disadvantages: What’s the point? That’s what most people will ask about various aspects of Qwiki. Perhaps the most pointless aspect is the electronic voice that recites the scrolling copy on the screen. Plus, you get the idea that Qwiki was developed in the hopes that one of the big guys – Google or Bing, for example, will buy it and incorporate it into their search engines. Don’t be surprised if you see that story arise in 2011.