The subprime mortgage crisis, the subsequent credit crunch and an aggressive response from the Federal Reserve Board have all combined to spike traffic to major online lenders, which has in turn prompted some of them to pull money from their search marketing budgets.

LendingTree.com, which reported record traffic to its website in the wake of the Fed rate cut, announced that it was scaling back its search marketing campaigns.

"With the Fed changes in January, we were driving natural traffic," LendingTree spokeswoman Allison Vail told CNET. "It's smarter for us."

According to industry estimates, LendingTree pays about $2.70 per click for listings with Google and Yahoo.

Sites like LendingTree are believed to be among the biggest buyers of paid search.

News that major buyers of search marketing may be opting for natural results -- at least for the present -- comes at a bad time for both Yahoo and Google. While the former is fighting for its life, Google has been hurt by reports of a decline in its paid search business.