A report released by SearchIgnite yesterday concluded that U.S. paid search increased almost 27% in the third quarter of 2008 compared to the year-ago period. It looks like sellers have shifted more money into interactive advertising from traditional marketing as of late.

However, the same report stated that retail advertisers upped their search spending in the Q3 period only by 1.5%. Roger Barnette, SearchIgnite's president, stated in the report that, "Retail had issues throughout the year, but it hasn't affected all sectors." Barnette concluded by saying that travel, media and the non-mortgage area of financial services didn't dip like traditional retailers this past quarter.

Adding to a general retail pull-back dlately, the report also stated that retail sellers cut back on paid search spending by 10% in September. Whether retailers continue to curtail paid ad spending in Q4 amidst the most tumultuous market and consumer outlook in a long time remains to be seen, but market sentiment thinks it will. Overall September sales slowed down at a pace not seen in three years and October may not be any better. Less sales = less paid ad spending? Pretty likely.

Make sure you're practicing safe search! In the world of search, paid search is a primary method online companies like Yahoo! and Google bring in income. A user searches for key words, and gets the search results, but also sees results off to the side or above the fold that are placed there by advertisers who pay for that placement.

Siteadvisor did a study of how dangerous those results were, both the regular searches and paid placement results, to see how many them involved sites that would seek to install malicious software on the searchee's computer.

Yahoo! placed 2nd in terms of safest searching, just after MSN, which has been on aggressive campaign to weed out dangerous results. Not bad, but another sign of how hard MSN is working to nip at Yahoo!'s and Google's heels.