According to Jupiter Research, paid search will continue to grow faster than any other sector of online advertising--increasing from $2.6 billion last year to $5.5 billion in 2009. This prediction was made on Monday at its Search Engine Strategies conference in New York. However, the rate of growth will decline as the market matures.

The company predicts that year-over-year growth will fall from 42 percent in 2005 to 18 percent by 2007, and 10 percent by 2009.

JupiterResearch analyst Niki Scevak also predicted that local search will grow, but not as fast as many hope. "We're bearish on local because the market seems to underestimate the time and resources necessary to acquire the reach that local obviously demands," Scevak said during a conference session.

While Jupiter expects local search to grow from $502 million in 2004 to $879 million by 2009, its percentage of the total online ad spend will decrease from 6 percent in 2004 to 5.5 percent by 2009.

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