California, Jan 20 – According to the US Search Engine Performance Report: Q4 2008 released by Efficient Frontier - the worldwide leader in Search Engine Marketing (SEM) technology and services, Google has maintained its hold on the search advertising market with 76 percent market share. Yahoo too continued its growth, gaining 3 percent market share year-over-year.

The Efficient Frontier report throws light on the fact that Google's market share leadership was underpinned by significant gains from Google Content, which experienced 63 percent growth in 2008. The stat clearly reflects Google's ongoing focus on improving its targeting and monetization capabilities across the AdSense network. Yahoo, which increased its market share by 1.9 percent in Q3, added another 0.5 percent in Q4 to end the year with a 3 percent annual gain and a total of 20 percent market share. Microsoft Live Search now represents 4.2 percent of total search advertising spend for advertisers in the Efficient Frontier index.

As industry research firm, eMarketer says it, "search ad-spending may not be recession-proof, but it is proving to be recession-resistant." eMarketer also believes that in spite of the decline in the projected rate of growth over the next three years, search ad spending growth will continue to be positive - specifically in double digits every year until 2012. After that, the same is expected to rise again to nearly 14 percent.

"Search engine marketing remains the most accountable sales and client acquisition channel on or offline," said James Beriker, President and CEO of Efficient Frontier. "To continue to achieve stellar results, the current recession has made it even more critical for search marketers to know their metrics and manage campaigns based on actionable market, sales funnel and conversion data…..,” says James.

Written by SynapseInteractive Copywriting Team.