Online merchants can expect to see an increase in sales compared to the previous quarter, according to a survey by Javelin Strategy & Research releases by eBillme.

Online shoppers are predicting that they will spend and average of $281 during the fourth quarter of 2009, a 24 percent increase over the last quarter. This is the first increase of online spending since last year, but also a 18 percent decrease in spending compared to the fourth quarter of2008.

“This quarter’s uptick in spending is evidence of improving consumer optimism as we head into the holiday shopping season, while consumers are planning to loosen their financial constraints this quarter, they are still holding on to recession spending habits.” Says President and CEO of eBillme.

“This includes changing the way they shop and pay to better control debt. Forty percent of consumers plan to use their credit cards less often in favor of non-credit payment options this quarter. We have seen this significant shift in attitude towards credit carry over from previous quarters, and it will definitely impact consumer spending decisions this holiday season.”

Consumers were also surveyed about projected holiday spending this year. Eleven percent are planning to do majority of their holiday shopping on Cyber Monday, while forty eight percent are planning on avoiding Black Friday shopping in favor of online shopping.

“This quarter’s Index shows some visible signs of improvement in the online retail sector,” says Beth Robertson, Director of Payments Research for Javelin Strategy & Research. “We haven’t seen a projected increase in anticipated spending since this time last year. And it comes just in time for retailers during the most important quarter for capturing sales and customers.

“Although consumers are still spending with caution, 51 percent are delaying purchases because of continued uncertainty in the economy. This increase is a positive sign that consumer confidence is on the rise.”

Google announced last week at the Web 2.0 summit that it was working on a social search feature, but also stated that it will be weeks before it went public. Social search taps into your social networks profiles and then displays relevant links and status updates from all your friends across your social profiles have shared and then displays them at the bottom of the search page. Google states that, Social Search will improve your search results on Google by providing you with personal relevant search results.

In order for you to start using Social Search you first have to go to Google Labs experimental section and then activate the Social Search Feature. Social Search will only be available in US and English for now.

From what networks?

Social Search will tap into three different sources, so you will need at least one of these accounts to make Social Search work, I would say at least Google profile would be best, if you don’t have one go make one here.

Social Search uses your Gmail’s contacts that you have created with your friends and coworkers for email and chatting with Google Talk. Social Search also uses your Google Reader subscriptions and all the social networking profiles that you have linked into your Google Profile.

Now you don’t need a Google Profile, this is the place with all your social networking profiles for Social Search to gather information from friends. Based on the information you give in your Google Profile, Google can now auto-detect all of your social networking profiles and your friends connected to services like Facebook, Flikr, FriendFeed, YouTube, Reddit, Digg, BrightKite, and  so many others.

How it Works.

Once you have activated Social Search, It’s results will appear at the bottom of your stand search results page and will be clearly labeled as “results from people in your social circle.” Goggles search evangelist Matt Cutts pointed out is that it is important to note that not every search will trigger the Social Search results. Now when it does, the  search results should be highly relevant to your search query .

You may also manually trigger Social Search from your search options panel while you are logged in. There, Google will now present a list of all your friends that it thinks that are closely relevant to the key phrases you were searching for.  By clicking on a name you can restrict your results even further and see results from just one person or two people.