It’s the start of a new year, which apparently gives any creature with opposable thumbs (that would include Giant Pandas, marsupials and some reptiles) an excuse to make any manner of baseless predictions.

Not one to miss out on a party, I’ve thrown together some thoughts (fueled by conjecture, my own idealistic notions, and quite a few beers) on what might transpire in the Search and Social Media space over the next 12 months. I’ve decided to focus on Google, as I’m very keen to see how + develops over the course of the year, and how its growth intertwines with that of search.

I’d dig to hear your thoughts – not just on the topics below, but on any predictions you might have for digital in 2012 – so please drop me a comment if you’ve got something to share.

The growth of voice search

There wasn’t much fanfare when Google added voice search functionality to its desktop browser earlier this year; partly because it was already available on mobile (by way of downloadable applications), but also because on desktop it feels more like an accessibility feature than something that’s of use to your average user.

Voice commands make far more sense on a phone, and I expect we’ll see this technology added to Google’s mobile browser in the near future. If and when this happens, it’ll be interesting to see how far Google takes it; will it simply serve traditional SERPs for voice search, or will implementation be more advanced than that? For instance, if a search query is relevant to a Google Places page, might we see Google mobile bypassing its SERPs in favour of displaying that asset instead?

Google is constantly working to improve the experience offered to its users, so I wouldn’t be surprised to see them do something like this provided they can find a way to preserve mobile ad revenue.

Even greater differentiation between “current” and “historical” content

Google announced in November that it had updated its algorithm to deliver more current results. Said to impact roughly 35% of searches, this “freshness” update (dubbed “Mint”) is in many ways an extension of its Caffeine web indexing system.

It takes a vast array of factors into account, and, as one would expect, Social signals are among them. The potential for Social signals (Tweets, Likes, +1’s) to affect search has been discussed ad nauseam, but to date the impact of these metrics on organic search results has been minimal. I think this is where that starts to change.

The problem has always been that Social shares don’t really work within the traditional search paradigm; when links to and from sites are the greatest determinant of relevance, the boost in authority provided by Social Media activity is extremely negligible. To give you an example:

• Article A and Article B feature the same keywords.
• Article A is shared 1,000 times on Twitter and Facebook.
• Article B isn’t shared but has 50 links from other sites.

In the above scenario, Article B will rank above Article A in almost every instance. In fact, virtually the only way that Article A would rank above Article B would be if a percentage of those 1,000 shares originated in the searcher’s Social circle; even then that would likely only be a factor for a finite period.

These limitations meant that the manner in which Google previously incorporated Social was extremely rudimentary (case in point, its old Twitter real-time results feed). The decision to focus on differentiating “current” and “historical” results means that Social Media can finally add value to its algorithm, as these two separate streams can have markedly different influencers.

Of course, Google will look to + to play a key role in this endeavour; as the network’s user base expands it’ll provide greater insight into what’s driving the conversation, which will in turn help its algorithm deliver more relevant results. While Mint’s success doesn’t hinge on + reaching critical mass, it would certainly make Google’s job easier if it did. Which brings me to my next prediction…

Google to expand +’s reach

We’ve spoken about the role + could to play in Google’s algorithm, but first it has to succeed as a social network. In order to do that, it needs more users; plain and simple.

Google has all the tools at its disposal to drive adoption, but what about retaining users once they’ve got them to sign up?

This is as much about positioning as anything else; most users aren’t going to use Google+ in lieu of Facebook or Twitter, so Google shouldn’t push it as an alternative to either. What they would be far more inclined to do is to use it in complement to the rest of Google’s vast suite of services.

The + user count currently sits at around 62 million, and if the current rate of growth continues, sign ups could near the 400 million mark come the end of 2012, but what use is that to anyone if the majority of those accounts are dormant?

In the shape of users on Gmail, YouTube, Chrome, Android, et al, Google has a captive audience. If they can gradually integrate + into all of these, and coax people into using it more and more until it becomes part of their daily routine, then they’ll have a winner on their hands; regardless of what the other players do.

Improvements to image and video search

I’m not a fan of shoehorning Social into everything, but Google’s image and video SERPs could do with an overhaul.

I expect +1 functionality will be added to image search and that something similar will be implemented for video too (perhaps a +1 button that works in conjunction with YouTube’s rating system?).

This doesn’t only make sense from the perspective of better image and video sharing within users’ Social circles; it would also add another layer to Google’s algorithm that would help deliver better results within these verticals.

Another factor to consider is the emergence of virtual pinboards, such as Pinterest, and how these could be referenced for further signals of relevance.

The continued evolution of Google Suggest

Google Suggest is pretty cool, but there’s potential for it to be a lot more helpful. Right now it merely serves as an aid in refining a search already in progress; what if it could be truly predictive and assist users in completing a series of actions?

Say you were searching for “flights to san francisco” – it’d be very handy if Google was able to see this search as part of a process and make suggestions based on that. It could recommend what to search for next – e.g. “accommodation in san francisco”, “attractions in san francisco”, etc – and give you the option to save a shopping list of sorts.

I’m sure Google’s long since thought of something along these lines, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see them go live with this sort of functionality during the next 12 months.

Greater Google+ capabilities for brands

This is a no-brainer. Google only launched its brand pages in November, and as such these are still way behind the Facebook and Twitter curve. I know I said Google shouldn’t try and emulate either of those two, but you can be certain they’re looking at F-Commerce and some of the features recently launched by Twitter (embedded Tweets in particular) and are thinking, “Yeah, we could do better.”

A significant advantage Google has here is that it doesn’t have the trust issues that Facebook has. Another potent weapon at its disposal is Product Search. Remember what I said about Google’s various services providing a captive audience? Well, Product Search is a potential gold mine. If they could incentivise users searching for products from within Google.com to sign up on Google+ and visit brand pages for discounts or special offers, that’d offer them a significant additional source of registrations. That’s power that Facebook and Twitter simply don’t have. Even with the reach of Open Graph and its myriad applications, Facebook is still little more than an island by comparison.

Schema, HTML5 and further enhancements to the SERPs

Over the past year or so we’ve seen Google experiment with all sorts of enhanced SERP functionality, and in June they launched Schema.org as part of a joint venture with Yahoo! and Bing.

Many of the enhancements we’ve seen to date have been a result of Google’s ever-improving understanding of the structure of web pages, as well as its ability to more effectively aggregate content from a number of sources (i.e. answering a question, or providing a definition, in the SERPs, rather than directing users to a site). Some of these have been quite impressive, but things can really be expected to take off as adoption of Schema and the HTML5 standard become more commonplace.

Marking up content gives it greater context, so this is something for SEOs to consider too. Neither Schema nor HTML5 appear to have a bearing on search rankings yet, but there’s no reason why they won’t be a serious factor in future (particularly with regards to embedded image and video).

Social Search recommendations to become less “linear”

In addition to keywords and semantics, present implementations of Social Search primarily base recommendations on two factors:

1)    How many times a piece of content has been shared.

2)    How many of the above shares can be traced back to a user’s Social circle.

This is a fairly linear system, and I expect we’ll see it evolve to place greater emphasis on Social “neighbours” (i.e. users with similar backgrounds, interests and share histories) when determining which results would be most relevant to a user.

Such a change would make Social Search more predictive, and would see results become more varied. It’s important, of course, that this doesn’t come at the expense of relevance, but that shouldn’t be a concern given the layers and layers of + user data that Google would have at its disposal.