On Tuesday, the Department of Commerce issued their report on January retail sales excluding autos. According to the report, retail sales grew 2.3% when compared to January 2005. Below, I’ve created a chart of visits to the Hitwise Retail 100 Index for January 2005 and January 2006. The Index indicates an average daily growth of visits to the index of 4.4% for January 2006 v. 2005.

In this daily view, we can see that the growth in visits year-over-year decelerates through the month, and that the two trend lines reach parity by the end of January. One of the theories on the strong beginning of January 2006 is that the holiday period was extended due to increased gift card sales in December (gift card revenue is only realized when the gift cards are redeemed for purchases). Hitwise search term analysis reveals that the peak searches for “gift cards” this holiday season grew 19.1% compared to the peak in 2004.