The search market changed incredibly in 2007 and will change just as significantly in 2008.

Google has cracked down on paid buying. Some brands have been forced to reconsider their natural search strategy as they seek to remove themselves from link buying as quickly as possible. Where will they go? It's fair to bet that many of these brands will look at the explosion of social networks and whether these mushrooming communities can be used as a means to building traffic, links and brand.

Will social media marketing live up to the hype? We have seen early adopters benefit hugely from their first brave steps. We've also seen other early adopters suffer from empty communities, brand nightmares and heavy investment with light return. We're yet to see whether OpenSocial platform will allow Google to match Yahoo's stronger social search presence, let alone catch up with Facebook.

Will users accept ads in their private Facebook space? 100,000 companies created profiles on Facebook within 24 hours of the network opening up to Facebook advertisers but how many of them have 'fans' yet? We can already find PPC arbitrage on Facebook; social ads which point to landing pages dominated by content network deals and pay-per-click links. It took Google years to cope with the problem. How long will it take FacebooK?

In Europe, Google rocked the search marketing book by announcing the death of the agency best practice funding (don't call it commission) deal. The bleak truth is that some agencies are now stuck in holes they dug by splitting these funds with advertisers and acting only as a discounting service. It is more than possible that some big spenders will move out of a simple discount model and move to those agencies with skilled staff, bid strategies and the ability to make a difference. The whole paid search landscape will be impacted as their PPC experts help these budgets raise their game.

Search is no longer restricted to web browsers either. Search advertising on mobile is projected to run a close second to Display. Yahoo's oneSearch for the mobile web has the early lead in applications installed on handsets but this year Google's Android and their Open Handset Alliance will attempt to outflank them. There's a tussle on the desktop too. Google continues to develop their Desktop Search (we're at version 5 now) and supports Firefox's attempts to dethrone Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

The days of just dealing with meta tags and content are long gone. This year search agencies are working in video, with podcasts, tracking phone sales and producing lists with longitude and latitude coordinates in so web based maps can include adverts or images alongside business directions. It is not surprising that the growing search agencies are also diversifying. Agencies which previously specialised in just Paid Search are madly trying to build search engine optimisation teams. Other agencies are growing their affiliate marketing or their display marketing departments while digital agencies who built themselves during the display boom are still trying to get into Search.

Andrew Girdwood - Head of Search, BigMouthMedia