Statistics from the Google Retail Advertising blog show that online shopping searches reached an all-time high on Google for 2009, on what is called Black Friday (the Friday after Thanksgiving Day).
Searches for the keyword ‘Black Friday’ have increased more than 20 percent year-over-year, and searches for ‘Black Friday sales’ and ‘Black Friday Ads’ increased by more than 50 percent year-over-year. ‘Walmart Black Friday’ was another popular search, along with ‘Kohl’s Black Friday Ad’ and ‘Sears Black Friday Sales’. Also on the rise was the term ‘printable coupon’, up 50 percent from the same time last year, and the term ‘sales’, which was up by 25 percent.
What the Google blog says is significant about this is that consumers now expect to find their Thanksgiving weekend hot deals online, rather than in their morning newspapers.
In 2008, more than 172 million shoppers visited online retail stores during the Black Friday weekend, having spent an average of $372.57 each.
Black Friday, for those of you unfamiliar with its history, is the beginning of the traditional shopping season. Traditionally, this shopping took place off-line, but it has, as Google demonstrates, becoming increasingly digitized.
That said, at least one article reports that shoppers skipped Black Friday shopping in favour of Cyber Monday online shopping (Cyber Monday being the Monday immediately following Black Friday – it’s the first day back at the office after Thanksgiving…where there is a heck of a lot of lunchtime online shopping).
For the two particularly heavily trafficked shopping days, online retailers tend to sweeten the online shopping deal by posting money saving offers like free shipping.
But just because there was an increase in searches doesn’t mean more money was spent. An article in the San Francisco Panorama explains that though more Americans shopped online on Cyber Monday this year, they probably spent less, on average, than the same time last year. The National Retail Federation, the article continues, estimates that 96.5 million Americans shopped online on Monday, but the average shopper spent 12 percent less than last year; the average spend this year being $343.12.
Still, it’s not bad. Since the overall number of sales rose, the difference in overall spend on the Black Friday weekend pretty much evened out compared to last year’s Black Friday sales, sitting at $41.2 billion this year, compared to $41 billion last year.
According to Forrester Research, online sales for 2009 are expected to account for 10 percent of overall holiday spend. This number, collated with the Black Friday spending statistics, would represent an eight percent gain for online retailers compared to 2008.
Kaila Krayewski is a freelance journalist with a passion for all things internet. Having worked for nearly two years as the public relations manager for an internation search engine optimization company, and publishing hundreds of articles (how-to, informational, and otherwise) on SEO, she knows a thing or two about the field. Furthermore, having just started up her own website blondetraveler.com, she is doing her best to keep one step ahead of the search engines in order to keep the traffic flowing.
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