In a recent article, we looked at some predictions from Nielsen for advertising trends in 2010. These included optimizing media convergence being a top priority, new models emerging to take advantage of smartphones, more cross-media ad campaigns, an increase in commercialization of social networking hubs, and more interesting and interactive online ads.

This time of year everybody likes to start making predictions about where industries are heading. This is especially true in the search industry. My guess is that we will see quite a few pieces this month regarding where search is going in 2010. These can make for entertaining reads and get the mind going with regards to how we are going to have to plan for an ever-changing future of search engine marketing.

It’s the time of year when not only does everybody reflect upon trends and happenings from the year past, but they also look forward and make predictions for the coming year. Nielsen has shared its projections for the top advertising trends for 2010. These are:

Google has released an extension of its Hot Trends feature, which brings some of its components to the results page when a user searches for one of the "hot trends." Now when a user’s query matches one of the top 100 trends (or fastest-rising search terms), Google will show them a graph and further information about how popular the query is.

In a way, today is a big day for Hulu. The popular video site will soon likely attract a huge number of views based on two shows that return to television this evening – NBC’s The Office and FX’s It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. These two have been huge hits for Hulu in the past, and that will likely continue as the two programs begin pushing out new episodes.

Search trends are fun, and give you an idea of what the mass population is into during a specific slice of time without always giving much of an explanation for why; the intent of their search could be merely informational or it could be commercial or for some other reason.

Are people waking up to the idea that exercise is the best way to lose weight? Maybe. Traditionally, Internet searches for burning off those holiday pounds spike the first week of the year. But this year, according to Hitwise, there’s been an increase in gym interest and a decline in search queries involving the keyword “diet.”

As you are no doubt aware, online video has experienced a tremendous year in 2008 in terms of growth and usage. I have personally documented a fair amount of the happenings in the industry over the year myself.

Yes, online visits to retail sites have been up. Yes, retailers are seeing increases in transactions and visitors. What they’re not seeing, though, is more money spent per transaction, which could make things roughly square with last year.

Though there were 2 million more shoppers whipping about online on Cyber Monday, a 22 percent increase over last year and a full 34 percent of the shopping population did their shopping online, Cyber Monday revenue went up a paltry one percent.

Google Reader has added some new data to the Trends department. For those who do not use Google Reader, or pay little attention to the Trends feature, it simply lays your reading habits out graphically so you can see when you are reading feeds the most, what you are reading the most, what you are reading the least, and so on.

Visits to places where one can spend money are down or flat compared to this time last year, according to Hitwise. News, however, is hot.

Multiple Olympic gold medal winner Michael Phelps is one popular guy.

Times of the Internet points out that (like many others these days) Phelps prefers Facebook to MySpace.

Users of Google Trends gained the option to download the comparisons they make through the service to a spreadsheet for further review.

If Internet buzz is any indication of the future—and it’s not, mind you, unless Ron Paul really will get the Republican nomination—David Cook is your next American Idol. According to search metrics and questionable phone measurements, Cook edged out David Archuleta by the slimmest margin in Idol history.

The persistence of housing woes may be seen in the activities of searchers, who perform fewer and fewer queries about home buying.

Google has created a version of its Trends search comparison tool that allows people to look at Google Checkout and what people buy with it.

We recently ran a Reader Poll asking what the hot search marketing trends will be for 2008.

The new year is here and we now have good enough sample of votes cast (78) to share what Online Marketing Blog readers are thinking:

 What will be the big stories in search marketing in 2008?