An analyst with investment firm Piper Jaffray says that there is a 70 percent chance that Apple will release its own search engine to compete with Google and Bing within the next five years, making for further complications in the future search engine optimization (SEO) market.

According to eWeek’s Clint Boulton, “as the search provider for the iPhone, Google also sees what iPhone users are searching for, which can help it tailor software and services for its own mobile smartphones. This competitive advantage has not gone unnoticed by Apple.”

While the mobile market could well be the primary catalyst behind Apple’s rumored move, its primary difficulty will be a programming one, writes TechTremor. Creating a search engine is a massively difficult endeavor, but the company’s extensive resources and increasingly strong urge to compete with Google could push it into just such an attempt.

While the world of search engine optimization (SEO) could be seeing a new competitor emerge, SEO professionals are already bracing for the disappearance of an old one: Yahoo will soon be taken over by Bing.