For the month leading up to May 9th, researchers found that paid search declined by twenty-nine percent overall.

In the travel category, paid search declined twenty-five percent. Retail 500 fell twenty percent and insurance twenty-two percent. While some marketers have pushed larger portions of their advertising budgets to online, others have axed advertising all together until the downturn is over.

"Consistently, brand name terms (such as "travelocity", "orbitz" and "walmart" saw a sharp decrease year over year in the share of paid clicks. For example, 35.75% of clicks on searches for "orbitz" were on paid listings in the four weeks to May 9, 2009," writes analyst Heather Hopkins on the Hitwise blog. "Referrals from search engines continue to climb but the proportion of clicks going to sponsored or paid listings is decreasing. This is no doubt a result of cutbacks in marketing spend due to the recession."