Hitwise also stated that the trend is noticeable across all categories except education. In education sites, paid search results have increased from 1.39% to 1.45%, whereas in major retail sites and travel agencies paid search traffic was down to 20% and 25% respectively. Amazon has declared that it will not pay referral fees to its affiliates.

The search giant Google has noted only 3 % rise in the paid clicks across all of its Adsense partners in the last quarter of 2008. Some of the large brands like Orbitz have skipped this paid link marketing strategy stating that they have already got first place for their respective brands.

Another reason for the decline may be due to the availability of other effective marketing strategies like email marketing which is available at low cost. Also some companies have moved to social networking which is the most effective way to reach the intended audience at zero cost.

Companies are getting smarter about searches and have moved to organic search engine optimization techniques like social networking, forum discussion, article submission, directory submission etc. This might be the major reason for the reduction of paid search traffic.