Small businesses were reluctant to pour money into online advertising during the last year because of the recession, but new data indicates that small businesses are ready to put more money into online pay-per-click programs such as Google’s (NASDAQ: GOOG) AdWords Program.

Business Week reported back in July that the average price-per-click being paid by advertisers fell by 13% during the period that ended June 30th. This decline indicates that fewer advertisers are competing to have their ads placed in search results for highly-competitive keywords resulting in lower earnings per click for both Google and its network of content publishers.

Another report indicated that online ad-sales fell by more than 5% during the first 6 months of 2009. Search ads held up much more than display advertising, but Google’s revenue growth has slowed to just 3% during the second quarter of 2009. Yahoo’s competitor to Google AdWords, Yahoo Search marketing, was also hit hard by the decline in spending by advertisers.

Google’s 3rd quarter earnings and other data released by Google indicate that we are in the middle of a resurgence in online ad-spending. As part of their third quarter earnings release Google announced that its revenues had increased by an annualized rate of 7% compared to the 3rd quarter of last year.

During the third quarter of 2009, Google earned a combined $5.35 billion in revenue from its search ads and the ads displayed on publishers sites through Google’s AdSense program. This represents a 7-8% annualized increase in total ad-revenue compared to the 3rd quarter of 2008. In another statement, Google announced that the amount that advertisers are paying on a per-click basis have declined 6% from a year ago, but rose by 5% during the 2nd quarter.

SearchIgnite, a firm that monitors online ad-sales, stated that online ad-sales had declined by 1% from a year ago, but total online ad sales increased by 10% during the 3rd quarter of 2009, compared to a 2% gain during the same quarters in 2007 and 2008. Another search marketing firm, Efficient Frontier, stated that they had observed a 5% increase in online ad-spending during the 3rd quarter of 2009.

Analysts have predicted that as the United States climbs out of the recession, search engine advertising will rebound most quickly because marketers can increase the amount of money they are spending on search-advertising in just a matter of minutes. Search engine advertising typically offers much better information about the rate-of-return that they are receiving from their ads, making it a prime choice for advertisers that want to make the best use of their ad-money.