E-tail Traffic Heaviest On Thanksgiving Day, Survey Shows

NEW YORK — Thanksgiving Day remained the busiest online shopping day of the holiday season for the fourth year in a row, according to a study by Hitwise, an Internet measurement service headquartered here.

The report, based on a sample of 10 million Internet users in the United States, found that Thanksgiving traffic to the top 100 retail Web sites surged 20 percent year-over-year, while online traffic on Black Friday increased 16 percent over the corresponding day in 2006.

The study suggests that most shoppers still prefer to do their online holiday shopping over the long Thanksgiving weekend, rather than on the following back-to-work Monday. For the past three years that day, dubbed "Cyber Monday," has been promoted by the National Retail Federation's Shop.org division as the ceremonial start of the online holiday shopping season.

The Thanksgiving Day surge was confirmed by ComScore, a Reston, Va.-based Internet measurement firm, which pegged the increase at 29 percent, for a day-long take of $272 million. But ComScore said sales volume was even greater on Black Friday, up 22 percent to $531 million, and predicted that the final e-tail tally would exceed $700 million on Cyber Monday.

Hitwise, a subsidiary of Experian, said Walmart.com was the most visited Web site on Thanksgiving Day, followed by BestBuy.com, CircuitCity.com, Amazon.com and Target. The next five most-visited sites belonged to Sears, Toys "R" Us, Kmart, Yahoo! Shopping and eBay's Half.com.

On the product front, video gaming was the No. 1 category in online sales from Nov. 1-23, ComScore said, with revenue up 134 percent year-over-year. Consumer electronics ranked third, with a 21 percent increase, behind furniture/appliances/equipment, which grew 36 percent.