How will a recession affect the web?

will it be a boom?

[ogletree]

I keep hearing a lot of people talking about how the US economy is about to drop into a recession. I was wondering how will that affect the web. Will people turn to buying more online because it is cheaper than retail? Will advertising money dry up for people that create content? I would imagine that some people will cut their SEO, PPC budgets first since most people still don't get how important it is. Also it may be harder for search marketers who specialize in small to medium companies who already have a hard time spending money on things.

[physics]

It's an interesting question. On the one hand I remember back in 2000/2001 people talking about how SEO and PPC companies stood in a good position because it is ROI trackable advertising (at least PPC is ... SEO to a lesser extent). Also more people may go online in order to deal-hunt ... and maybe more people will buy and sell stuff on ebay and the like. On the other hand if companies are spending less money and pocketbooks are tighter overall then maybe that's not so good.

[Osagie Irowa]

The recession might turn out to be pretty good for SEO/SEM experts who focus on helping small businesses, and most will start cutting Google Adwords budget and turn to SEO experts for help with "organic search" rankings. Most of my clients turn to me to provide a cost-effective way to achieve "organic google search results". If google comes out with the "cost per action" model, then everything will be ok. regards, osagie irowa

[edited by: jatar_k at 12:34 am (utc) on Jan. 24, 2008]
[edit reason] no sigs thanks [/edit]