“I would expect that search marketing would fit general advertising trends, at least to some extent. It’s expected that advertising will trail the economy in a recession: advertising budgets are usually committed in advance, companies don’t want to cut back on advertising and decrease their sales unless it’s clear that consumer spending is going to be less responsive to advertising, and they’re not likely to make big moves on their advertising budgets until they feel the effects of decreased revenues. Search marketing isn’t exactly like other advertising, however. Search marketing seems a little more essential than a huge Superbowl ad, for one. Also, search marketing — just because of the nature of the internet — can be more international than other advertising, so it might be less affected by a US recession. But it is certainly not immune — and when consumers stop buying as many goods online and companies don’t have the money to spend on campaigns anymore, search marketers are sure to feel that.”

Adding to Danny's comments there is one significant element that does provide value to internet marketing which is often difficult to provide with other areas of advertising, that is the way that the process can be tracked and verified absolutely with regard to analytics.

The challenge for companies should be to now evaluate their conversions from the traffic they have and make improvements, after all increasing conversions by 1% is far more beneficial than increasing the traffic by 1%.