For Immediate Release

Contact: Matt Tatham - Hitwise – 1.212.380.2939

2006 Online Holiday Retail Season Influenced by Black Friday Websites and Competitive Traffic

 Hitwise Releases Findings From U.S. Holiday Recap Research Report

NEW YORK, February 1, 2006 – Hitwise, the leading online competitive intelligence service, today announced the findings of the Hitwise US Holiday Retail Recap Research Report, which summarizes a number of online retail activities during the 2006 holiday season.

For the third year in a row, daily traffic by market share of visits to retail websites during the holiday season showed a similar pattern. Each year, visits to the Hitwise Online Retail Index[1] achieved the largest market share of visits on Thanksgiving Day, with subsequent spikes on the three weekends leading up to Christmas, and a post-Christmas spike on December 26.

Black Friday websites played a more important role in post-Thanksgiving offline shopping in 2006. The market share of visits to the leading five Black Friday websites increased by 66 percent when comparing Thanksgiving week 2006 to the same week in 2005. Consumers also sought out information on Black Friday specials in greater numbers: the share of Internet searches for the term 'black friday' was increased by 348 percent when comparing the four weeks ending November 25, 2006 to the four weeks ending November 26, 2005.

"The surge in visits to Black Friday websites and Thanksgiving day visits to retail websites shows that holiday shoppers have become more adept at using the Internet to research offline purchases,"  said LeeAnn Prescott, research director at Hitwise. "With competitive traffic and search as the largest sources of retail traffic, competitive intelligence and search intelligence becomes even more important for planning holiday retail traffic acquisition strategies."

Below are additional findings from the report:

Search Engines and Competitive Websites Lead as Sources of Retail Traffic - Search Engines and other Shopping and Classifieds websites were the leading sources of traffic to the Shopping and Classifieds industry in December 2006, together accounting for more than 50 percent of industry upstream visits.

Cyber Monday Traffic Up 13 Percent– The day with the largest increase in visits to the Retail Index in 2006 versus 2005 was the Monday after Thanksgiving, with a daily increase of 13.2 percent on November 27, 2006 versus November 28, 2005.

Google Checkout Traffic Doubles - The market share of visits to Google Checkout increased by 109 percent from November 2006 to December 2006, and Hitwise Clickstream data reveals the success of Google Checkout for online retailers, providing a window into conversion activity.

PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Wii Interest Drops, iPod Dominates Zune - Searcher interest in both PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Wii gaming consoles dropped as the products sold out.Retail-related searches for the iPod vastly outnumbered retail related searches for Zune, Microsoft's MP3 player.

Christmas Day Dominated by iTunes and Apple Store - On Christmas Day, iPod owners flocked to the web download iTunes software, buy accessories for their new iPods, and redeem iTunes and Apple Store gift cards. The market share of visits to the iTunes website (www.apple.com/itunes) increased by 413 percent versus December 25, 2005, and the market share of visits to the Apple Store (store.apple.com) showed an increase of 110 percent in the same period.

To request a copy of the Hitwise US Holiday Retail Recap Research Report please visit: http://www.hitwise.com/registration-page/holiday-retail-recap-us.php

About Hitwise:

Hitwise is the leading online competitive intelligence service. Only Hitwise provides its 1200 global clients with daily insights on how their customers interact with a broad range of competitive websites, and how their competitors use different tactics to attract online customers.

Since 1997, Hitwise has pioneered a unique, network based approach to Internet measurement. Through relationships with ISP’s around the world, Hitwise’s patented methodology anonymously captures the online usage, search and conversion behavior of 25 million Internet users. This unprecedented volume of Internet usage data is seamlessly integrated into our easy to use, web-based service, designed to help marketers better plan, implement and report on a range of online marketing programs.

Hitwise is a privately held company, headquartered in New York City and operates in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore. More information about Hitwise is available at www.hitwise.com.

For up to date analysis of online trends, please visit the Hitwise Intelligence-Analyst Weblogs at weblogs.hitwise.com.

[1] The Hitwise Online Retail Index is a group of 100 leading retail websites from the Hitwise Shopping & Classifieds category and excludes websites of the following types: auctions, classifieds, computer manufacturers, relationship sales, reward point collecting and home entertainment sites including music download, DVD and video game rental.