Is SEO Recession Proof ?

Even though advertising spending may be down online, according to the UK Search Engine Marketing Benchmark Report, over half of the companies surveyed are going to increase their SEO budget this year.

"According to a report published earlier this month by Guava and Econsultancy, companies are continuing to invest in search engine optimization with over half expecting an increase in their budgets this year."
Full article here

This seems to me to be a good idea anyway, with the economy like it is, the companies have to figure out a way to get their brand's name out to the public.
And what better way than by showing up at the top of Google and Yahoo searches?

If you do a search on Google Trends, you will see that "SEO" is a steadily rising term, as is SEM.
Is SEO mainstream yet?
Not really.
While a search for SEO turns in 4,090,000 for monthly search volume, Britney Spears turns in 20,400,000.
So SEO is not deep in the public's mind yet.
But the SEO industry is not going away.
And it may actually turn out that search engine optimization companies are one of the most recession proof industries.