• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, July 11, 2011

The inflated revenue growth that some brands experienced in 2010 will make this year's revenue appear to be slowly growing. Perhaps I'm a skeptical optimist, but "slow growth" -- rather than "no growth" -- remains the keyword phrase that search marketers should lock into.

Revenue rose 30% in 2010 for many PM Digital clients using Google Sitelinks, according to CEO Suzy Sandberg. Aside from Sitelinks, Google remarketing also made a major impact. But with the one-year anniversary for both tools in the past, marketers have begun to experience an end to the double-digit year-on-year growth that remarketing and Sitelinks helped to produce.

So Google continues to find ways for advertisers to profit from AdWords. The search engine recently added two additional Sitelinks to the four previously available in paid-search ads. PM Digital clients North Face, CB2, Sportsman Guide, Paul Fredrick, AARP and others have begun to take advantage of the two additional links. At least one client sees a 15% increase in click-through rates. "Every time the click-through rate goes up, the cost per click declines because it's based in part by the quality score," Sandberg said.

Paid-search marketing budgets for PM Digital's clients rose 2% in June, helping revenue rise 16% compared with the prior year. Conversion rates jumped 24%, and average order values increased 5%. Rewind's monthly paid-search clicks index dipped 4% in June. On average, retail saw paid-search ad dollars become more efficient with fewer non-converting clicks.

Revenue and orders rose slightly higher in the first half of June, although the rise-and-fall performance pattern held true, with peaks during the start of each week and dips on weekends.

Over at San Diego-based Covario, spending for high-tech and consumer electronics companies rose 7% for paid-search marketing for Q2 2011, compared with the year-ago quarter. Paid-search spending in Q1 2011 rose 26%, according to a recent report titled "Global Search Advertising Spend Analysis."

Covario confirms that search spending remains on track to grow between 15% and 20% in 2011, compared with last year.

The search marketing firm also expects Bing to make continued improvements with Yahoo to its platform, allowing the two to move forward with rolling out a combined search engine in Europe and more efficient pan-European campaign deployment, which may take between 3% and 5% of spend.

In the report, Covario makes it clear the company cannot confirm that advertisers will add this to their 2011 plans. The Bing search algorithm will roll out in EMEA in 2011, which will lead to a short-term increase in spending on Bing -- between 1% and 2%.