Websites that aggregate Black Friday deals from retailers always start to garner more attention in the weeks building up to the Thanksgiving weekend as consumers start to research upcoming holiday purchases. Early shoppers have already started seeking information around Black Friday promotions, driving the market share of visits to increase 12% last week as compared to the same week in 2008. One interesting trend is that there was a 6% decline in visits year-over-year to the Black Friday custom category although search queries including the keywords ‘black friday’ increased 50% last year as compared to 2008.


One driver behind the decline in visits to the Black Friday websites is that retailers are doing a better job attracting shoppers directly to their websites. During the week of Thanksgiving & Black Friday 2009, the Rewards & Directories category (includes Black Friday advertisement websites) received 56% of the search clicks from a portfolio of Black Friday related search terms, down from 71% the same week in 2008. However, retailers within the department store category (includes multi-category retailers such as Amazon, Wal-Mart and Target) captured nearly 16% of the search clicks last year, up from 8% in 2008. Either is a win for the retailers if the shoppers convert into buyers, but bringing them directly to their websites can help capture customers before cross-shopping across other competitors.