The online phone service will spin off as an independent company next year, giving it a greater ability to redefine itself. Local search could be one way to do this, tying Skype in with a local search engine with click-to-call functionality.

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The year of mobile has perpetually been on the horizon, proving time and time again to only be a desert mirage. Now we're closer than ever, but the market is understandably cautious of bold claims about mobile search and location-based services.

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With mobile Web publishers, Google is following the same path it did online many years ago: Partnering with publishers to share ad inventory and planting its search box all over the place.

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This week saw a series of events and announcements that indicate more love for local search, despite a continually faltering economy.

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Local search sometimes seems like Rodney Dangerfield: It can't get no respect. But there have also been glimmers of hope for local, if you watch closely enough.

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TV and search are converging. Finding something good to watch could soon be more like online search, and less like browsing through a cable channel guide.

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Location awareness -- the concept that a device knows exactly where it is -- is changing the way mobile search works. Search applications are being developed to tap into this capability and serve more locally relevant content. The next steps will be for national advertisers and ad networks to serve ads that are actually useful and actionable for local users.

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"Research online, buy offline," (ROBO) is the concept that a growing volume of product research is happening online while the majority of buying remains offline in physical stores. A growing number of local search engines are basing their business model on the concept. But why haven't ROBO features picked up on a mass market level?

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The need to bridge the gap between the online and offline worlds is a key issue in local search. Though search volume continues to rise and capture a growing percentage of product research, more than 95 percent of actual purchase behavior in the U.S. still takes place offline.

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Can the iPhone and Google's Android fix the limitations that have plagued mobile advertising and mobile search? It could take a couple years to really get moving, but after a long period of being rusted shut, it appears that the wheels are finally starting to creak forward on local mobile search.

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A few television and cable companies appear to have taken a page from the online marketing playbook. But if television networks are to take a page from the Internet, they should take the entire page. In other words it's not just effective placement, but direct response capability that has made search marketing shine.

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Social media has been positioned by many as a killer app for mobile, along with local search. The combination of all three -- mobile, local, and social -- makes sense, as they go hand in hand in lots of situations. The new 3G iPhone could introduce entirely new ways to think about mobile, and a whole new batch of mobile products built on them.

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The LA Times is in the midst of an aggressive online product rollout. If anyone should be able to build solid local content sites, it's newspapers. It's their game to lose, with a sizeable but quickly closing head start, as publishers across the country sit on their hands.

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Much of the discussion around Universal search, or blended search, focuses on video and images. But local search may be a more important factor, one that has the greatest impact in blended search results.

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At the intersection of video and SEO, local search sites and IYPs – as the traditional "owners" of local – have the most to gain, and the most to lose.

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Make your SMB videos number one at the universal search box office.

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Mobile Local search has arrived. Search will never be the same again.

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Magic 8-ball rocks '08 local search trends. Boland calls it in the Kelsey corner pocket.

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Twitter search brings structure to all the noise with an index of real time conversations. but is the excitement around Twitter causing us to force unnatural mashups, as with local search?

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Improved capabilities of the Safari mobile browser in the latest iPhone have lots of implications for mobile local search. They essentially make it easier to build mobile products without having to spend time and money on native app development.

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