I know my video references are starting to seem like a homage to Mike McDonald’s efforts over at WebProNews, but he just keeps delivering videos and interviews worthy of your eyes and ears.

This week we uncover the future of Search as predicted by Rebecca Lieb, Vice President of Econsultancy. Mike quizzed Rebecca at the recent SMX Advanced conference in Seattle.

More WebProNews Videos

So what did Rebecca’s crystal ball of Search have to say? A couple of predictions and ideas that she raised which resonated with me I’ve detailed below, but of course watch the video to digest it yourself.

1. The social and behavioural data will be cause for heavy investment by search engines. Rebecca sees the data available in our various social networks as the foreseeable “pot of gold” for the likes of Google, Yahoo! and Bing/MSN.
2. Apps will play a much bigger role in search, especially the mobile arena. Google etc, could lose their stranglehold on this space, as apps steal market share.
3. The importance of reputation management in search marketing strategies will become even more important as social media adoption balloons.

While the distance of her predictions aren’t all that far into the future, they do reinforce some of the discussions we’ve had internally with the ineedhits team. More importantly they also provide some guide as to what you should be considering in your plans for the next couple of years.

It’s only a short video, so have a watch a see which of her other predictions resonate with you. Feel free to share them below!