It’s only almost Halloween, but holiday shopping season will soon be upon us. Every year the weekend that includes both Thanksgiving and Black Friday acts as the official kick-off for holiday shopping – even though some shoppers start as early as August. The heavy promotional activity that takes place on Black Friday lures many shoppers to head the stores hoping to capture a bargain, but not before researching prices and deals online before leaving the house. Interest from shoppers around Black Friday promotions increases online during each holiday season in terms of searches and visits to Black Friday websites. Last year during the week of Thanksgiving and Black Friday, the share of traffic from searches that included ‘black friday’ increased 50% as compared to the same week in 2008. Searches have been slowly starting to build since late-July in anticipation of which products may be heavily discounted this season, but the real momentum takes place in October and November as information from retailers becomes more readily available.

Among the websites to receive traffic from Black Friday searches during the week of November 28, 2009, Black Friday Advertisements received the highest share of search clicks followed BlackFriday.info and Black Friday.Wal-mart was the top retailer to receive traffic from Black Friday searches and is the retail name most commonly included in searches, followed by Best Buy and Target.

Last week, searches around Black Friday are commonly including the year to find the current deals and curiosity around Wal-Mart’s upcoming Black Friday ads. The vast majority of the search traffic is driven by organic results, a ratio that is likely to begin to shift towards paid as Black Friday approaches.

Join us next Wednesday, November 3rd at 1pm EDT for our additional insights during our webinar on ‘Crafting Black Friday Strategies’.