What issues should marketers be addressing in developing their Search Engine strategies in 2008? What are the basic ABC guidelines for Search they should have locked down?

2007 saw some major changes take place with Google and other search engines. The introduction of Universal search (as Google refers to it) means that, instead of only returning text documents for a user query, you can now expect to see a blend of video, images, news results, stock quotes and localised results being returned.

This type of approach provides the end user with a much richer experience. For a long time search engines have happily catapulted end users to another web site from theirs within seconds of them returning the results to the user's query. Now, using technology such as AJAX search engines can let users watch videos, for instance, right there on the results page without them having to go to another web site.

It was inevitable that search engines would want to take advantage of Web 2.0 (let's just call that the broadband era, shall we). Back in the day, when most users were on a dial-up connection, returning 10 blue links on a page following a query was easy enough for the average user to deal with. But now, in an age when people have the bandwidth to download movies, music and software, ten blue text links at a search engine is a pretty lame experience.

So it's fair to say that, search engine optimisation which has been predominantly about tweaking text on web pages and looking for links will change dramatically in 2008. It will become much more of a marketing and PR approach making sure that you're getting mentioned and tagged in all the right places such as Digg and del.icio.us and getting around all of the social networking sites such as MySpace and FaceBook.

And it's not just search engine optimisation that's changing. We're beginning to see Universal style results cropping up in Google's paid search results also. Many results now have local listings attached. You can tell when you see the small "plus box" added to the result. Click the "plus box" and the listing expands to show a map along with telephone number and address of the business. Of course, by clicking the "plus box" and expanding the top paid result, you then push a lot of the natural (or organic) listings down below the fold.

Quite simply, search engines such as Google are changing the way they present their results. And the search marketing industry in 2008 is going to have to be nimble to keep up with changes and get used to adopting different optimisation techniques to those which have been used in the past.

Having said that, don't stop doing what you're doing right now if it's still working. Just be ready to move with the times.

Which company’s online marketing in any form – from viral to email - has impressed you in 2007?

2007 was certainly the year of FaceBook. Social networking sites such as FaceBook, MySpace, Linked-In and Spock spread like wildfire purely by word of mouth. I can't think of any one specific company to highlight for their marketing efforts. But those who have grasped the notion of social search and have been able to integrate marketing messages into social networking sites deserve a mention.

My close friend and colleague Sue Bratton in the States seems to be able to seamlessly integrate promotion of her web site via her social network profiles and posting. But Personal Life Media www.personallifemedia.com  is a lifestyle and issues based site with tons of relevant material. It's because of this type of content that she's able to make the social network medium work as the messages are informative and fairly non intrusive.

I'm always impressed by companies who can use search as the primary driver for traffic but understand that it works much better when it's part of integrated marketing programme. Having a great search marketing strategy is good, but I don't think that search works well in a silo. It's much better when it's part of a more holistic approach.

What will 2008 bring in terms of new developments for search?

Having already mentioned the exciting changes that all of the major search engines introduced last year, I think we'll be seeing more of the same. Certainly one area of search which has a lot of research going on is in the field of sentiment analysis.

Reputation management is something most companies are concerned with. When an end user does a search for a specific brand or product, you want to be sure that the results they get are positive about you - not negative. Many search marketing companies are now providing reputation management services. They monitor search engine results for keywords and phrases that you wish to be found on. They then report the positive or negative. Obviously, their mission is to rid the search engine results of any links leading to negative reviews or comments.

For smaller companies it's not too difficult to manually provide this type of service. But it becomes a lot more difficult when you are a huge organization with thousands and thousands of keywords and phrases related to your products and services.

Anyone who can automate the process will most certainly be on to a winner. At this time you can do automated searches, but you have no idea whether the results coming back are positive or negative without manually checking them. At this time, algorithms still don't understand meaning. John loves Mary and Mary loves John are exactly the same keywords, but the meaning is entirely different.

And, for instance, if someone writes about a movie "I don't know how the audience could sit through it" that's about the worst thing you could say about a movie. And yet, there's not a negative word in the comment.

If someone cracks the sentiment analysis issue to be able to determine automatically whether a comment like the one above is negative or positive, I think they'll be on to a very big earner.

Has social networking been over-hyped in your opinion in terms of what it can deliver for advertisers? If not why not?

I've already touched on the social networking topic. But to be absolutely clear, I think it is a bit like the buzz about doing business in China. Everyone raves about the possibilities of doing business with one billion searchers, but the market is still very much in its infancy. And the same applies to the social media buzz. Yes the possibilities are wonderful, but right now very few marketing organizations are able to leverage the power.

I kind of liken it a little to the problem with email. We all enjoy receiving messages and alerts via email. But we all dislike intrusive spam emails asking us of we'd like to collect our millions from Nigeria or increase the size of various parts of our anatomy.

The same thing applies with social media. If you start infiltrating sites with out-and-out marketing messages it's rather like receiving spam. However, there are a lot of smart marketers who understand the power of influencers. These are the people with the hugely popular blogs who really are influencing your customers.

Tapping into that information exchange is a very powerful marketing tool.

Which dedicated online brand impresses you with its functionality, customer service and general ease of use?

If its pure play, I tend to find the easyJet site very simple, functional and straight forward (although I can't say the same for their actual offline operation!).

And chestnut as it is, Amazon still takes a lot of beating. I think over the years Amazon has done a lot of usability testing and a great deal of end user research. And in turn, I guess many other similar commerce sites take notice of what Amazon learns and implements and then follow suit.

Generally speaking, most of the brand sites I regularly visit (whether they're pure play or bricks and clicks) the standard of usability and customer service is improving all the time. And that's a sure sign of just how much business is migrating from offline to online.