Is search engine marketing recession proof? Probably yes. Search engines are based on algorithms which can trace internet traffic and current trends. It is much more efficient way to reach the target audience. Google dominate US search market and has nearly 62 percent share. If analyst is to be believed, Google revenue from SEM is increasing about 33% this quarter. That leads to interesting competition across industry players who do search engine marketing business besides Google, Yahoo. Few well know companies are Efficient Frontier and Zanox. Both of these companies are bullish about their future growth. Even with the slipping U.S. economy, SEM spending in North America is now projected to grow to $25.2 billion in 2011, a significant increase from last year’s forecast of $18.6 billion, according to a research done by Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO).

Last week had an opportunity to talk with Anand Ranghanathan , co-founder of Efficient Frontier. He talked about the future of search engine marketing and how keywords are getting utilized to reach the perspective consumers and better advertising ROI. Good thing about search engine marketing is, advertisers can measure the effectiveness of advertising, which is really difficult in traditional marketing like TV or print media.

Another interesting observation is Intel’s impressive growth for this quarter. Which suggest that demand for desktop is increasing and more and more people are getting connected to internet. Going to this logic probably a robust quarterly growth from Microsoft is due