Holiday Web Shopping Hits $20.65B

NEW YORK (AP) -- Holiday online spending reached $20.65 billion in the U.S. as of Monday night, a 25 percent rise over 2005, according to data released Wednesday from comScore Networks.

Shoppers spent more than $643 million last weekend, 34 percent higher than the corresponding weekend last year, the Reston, Va.-based research group reported.

"The strategy of luring holiday shopping procrastinators with extended shipping guarantees paid off handsomely for online retailers," Gian Fulgoni, chairman of comScore Networks, said in a statement.

ComScore raised its forecast for total spending this holiday season by $300 million to $24.6 billion.

ComScore reported Web traffic data for the month of November Tuesday evening.
In terms of unique visitors, Yahoo Inc. sites still topped the list at 129.9 million.

Time Warner Inc. sites, which include AOL, followed, then Microsoft Corp.'s MSN and other sites, Google Inc., and eBay Inc.

News Corp.'s Fox Interactive Media, which includes the popular social hangout MySpace, came in sixth, even though MySpace received more total page views last month than Yahoo.

ComScore also reported that 9 of the top 10 growing categories of Web sites were retail-related, thanks to holiday shopping pressure. Online department stores saw visitors climb 24 percent over October. In that category, Wal-Mart Stores Inc.'s site saw a 64 percent gain in visitors month-over-month and Target Corp.'s traffic rose 37 percent. The research group said Wal-Mart's gain was helped by traffic to its electronics section, which more than doubled.

Best Buy Co. and Circuit City Stores Inc. both saw traffic rise steeply, as did specialty gifts retailer RedEnvelope Inc.