Thanksgiving is almost here, time for turkey, pumpkin pie – and online shopping. Each year Thanksgiving is the peak traffic day to the Retail 500, particularly among many of the brick & mortar players, who use the online channel to help inform shoppers about in-store (and online) Black Friday deals. Although bad news about holiday sales is piling up around us as we finally kick off the holiday shopping season, there is a positive sign. We continues to see growth in traffic to a custom category of Black Friday websites during the week ending Nov. 22, 2008, where the market share of visits grew 58% when compared to the week before Thanksgiving in 2007.

In addition to the growth in traffic to the Black Friday websites, the visits are also sending shoppers over to retailers’ websites, so there is definite interest from consumers in terms of what Black Friday specials are going
to be out there. These visits will not necessarily always translate into sales, but in this current economic climate, any interest may be a positive sign towards future purchase intent. Last week Wal-Mart received the greatest share of referred traffic from the Black Friday websites, followed by Sears, and Circuit City.

Right now, for the retail category overall traffic is flat when the market share of visits for last week is compared to the week before Thanksgiving in 2007 (to adjust for the later holiday this year).

The daily market share of visits to the Retail 500 (adjusted to reflect the number of days leading up to Thanksgiving) has also remained relatively flat as we head into the holiday shopping season.

Flat traffic doesn’t translate into the greatest news, but its more optimistic in this scary climate than sharp declines in traffic, right?