Total US online visits to the top 500 retail sites are up 6% last week compared to same time last year. The custom category of 500 retail sites received 607 million total US visits last week and recorded its’ 3rd straight week of growth heading into the Peak Week of online retail traffic. This growth is consistent with what we reported back in October.

We previously noted that the anticipation of Black Friday has been building as Black Friday-related searches were up 17% two weeks ago as compared to the previous year and 154% from the previous week. All of this is good news for retailers as many have been offering their Black Friday deals earlier this week as some shoppers recently told The New York Times that they were tired with waking up early to find stores packed full of people and out-of-stock on the best deals.
Among the categories driving this growth in traffic are Department stores (e.g. Amazon and Wal-Mart) and House & Garden (e.g. Home Depot and Pottery barn).

Below is a list of the top visited retail sites for last week:

It will be interesting to see how this year’s surge of “Christmas Creep” will affect consumer behavior online. Black Friday has been the top visited day among retails sites for the last two years and Thanksgiving Day has traditionally been a heavy online retail day in years past.