One of the predictions from SEO consultants, SEOMoz is that SEO will become harder as search engines try to keep you on their site by answering your queries before you even click on a search result. This can be seen in automatic answers that appear for you search. The most rudimentary of which would be a query like, how many meters in a mile. Just type meters in a mile and you will be returned the result.
1 mile = 1 609.344 metres
If you need to know the weather it will show the answer as you type in the suggestion box. At least it will in the US Google, it does not do this in the UK yet.
It is not just Google that is doing this, Bing is also in on the act. If you type a flight number into Bing, it will give you results of its current status, where it started from and its destination.
All these feature are seen as ways of answering the query without having to go to a website. The search engines are becoming information engines. What effect will this have on driving traffic to a site?