It's been a weird week on the road. I've been bouncing around like a pinball along the East Coast and Midwest. I miss my kids. I miss my wife. I miss my bed. I have to blow off a little steam and you're in the line of fire. So be it.

One of the main issues I encounter in search is how to balance approaches with other areas of the online marketing swarm, namely content development, public relations, social media and networks, and Web development. Each has its own critical importance to natural search performance, and depending on who is in charge, search can either enhance each respective discipline, or it could also come at the expense of that discipline. The best option is to balance all considerations in such a way that everyone wins. And the good news is that it can be done.

At the IFA conference in Berlin a couple weeks ago, Google's Eric Schmidt described a utopian vision of the future, one in which we are relieved from all that pesky, burdensome searching so we can focus on what's really important. As Chloe Albanesius reported in PCMag:When someone asks 'what's the weather like' - what you're really asking is 'should I wear a raincoat' or 'should I water the plants?'" Schmidt said. "We think we can get closer" to the information for which a user is really searching.

Increasingly search marketers are tapped to help a business or organization expand marketing initiatives into the realm of social networks -- mainly because search marketers have the unique ability to bridge the creative and technical divide.

Industry publications are buzzing about the imminent Search Alliance and the impact it will have on advertisers. However, with no "set" transition date, it is all just speculation. My prediction is that much of the impact will be masked by the natural surge driven by the holiday shopping season. As I recollect the concern over Project Panama and the amount of extra work it created, I must admit I am much more at ease with this change.

Who can say no to MediaPost Publisher Ken Fadner? Certainly not me. And so, next Monday, I'll be joining all you OMMA-ites (OMMAhanians?) in New York City for the big show. Ken wanted me to set the stage by spending a little more time talking about a subject I raised a few columns back, entitled "SNAFU: the New Normal." In that column, I mentioned that a lot of companies going through huge transitions ask if there are any examples of other companies that have done it right. I said then the simple answer is no. We're all figuring this stuff …

There's been lots of chatter across the Interwebs about Google Instant over the past couple weeks. Two of my fellow Search Insiders took the bait, with Todd Friesen declaring "Google Instantly Annoying" and Rob Garner penning "Steve Rubel Backpedals On Death Of SEO Post." Here are 10 storylines I'm expecting to see in the coming months as a result of Google Instant:

I've been resisting the cult of iPhone for years now. Hanging around iPhone users when you don't have an iPhone yourself is like hanging around stoners when you don't get high. At first, they seem like a lot of fun -- but after a while, they just get annoying. Could you stop with the giggling and the pizza already? I'm over it. And who cares if you have an app that lets you pretend to drink beer? Does that really make you cool?

2010 was the year SearchNet went online ... OK, Terminator jokes aside, the more I think about what is going on, not just within search, but within the digital universe overall, the more I accept that search moving forward will become a much more fragmented experience -- no longer dominated by a small list of very large players. It's also likely search may not continue to be the focus of digital domination.

Often, clients have questions about strategy and execution, but they are questions that serve their day-to-day needs. Because clients are so frequently heads down, they don't get as much time to think about bigger questions that matter to their success as well. This is where I get to come in and align their long-term needs and questions with their immediate plans. With search marketing, there are more questions than time -- or in this case copy space -- allows, but here are a few for your radar.