Search may appear to be recession-proof, but that doesn't mean the king of search -- Google -- will rest on its laurels during the difficult economic times.

Ads account for 97 percent of Google's revenue, and the company is looking to increase revenue by selling ads on web services that were previously ad-free, according to a Wall Street Journal report. The search giant recently began running ads on Google Finance, and will soon start selling ads on Google News.

Other priorities include display and mobile advertising, and the company is shifting more resources toward those projects and away from less promising ones. In recent weeks, Google has shut down some projects that never caught on, including its virtual world, Lively.

"Letting a thousand flowers bloom and letting many of them stall and go nowhere has worked well to this point," said Thomas Eisenmann, a professor at Harvard Business School. "But if you want to be the dominant advertising network across every medium, you need more top-down management."

The search giant is also looking to cut costs by reducing the number of contract workers it employs and cutting back on some employee perks, including free meals.

If Google is to put all its eggs in the advertising basket, it should be in good shape. Online advertising will continue to grow next year, albeit not at the torrid pace it has in recent years. Still, search has shown resilience to the current recession, and even with the cutbacks, Google is still in far better position than some of its competitors, such as Yahoo, which has experienced massive layoffs already.