Custom analysis of those searching for “layaway” terms during the 12 weeks ending November 12th revealed that 63% of these online users have a VantageScore of D or F, indicating they are not a credit-worthy group of consumers. They are also most likely to be between the ages of 18 – 34 (64%), female (59%) and, compared with the general online population, over index on living in Mississippi, Alabama, Kentucky and West Virginia.

Kmart and Wal-Mart, two retailers which are heavily advertising layaway via television ads, are the top recipients of traffic from layaway search terms for the most recent 12 rolling week period (December 3, 2011). Kmart is paying for nearly half of these search clicks, while all of Wal-Mart’s search traffic is driven by organic clicks. Overall, the volume of search clicks to Wal-Mart from layaway terms increased nearly 30 times year over year and five of the top ten layaway search terms include variations of Wal-Mart.

Thanks to Lauren Rice, an Analyst with the Strategic Services team at Experian Hitwise for today's analysis.

Traffic during the 2011 holiday season shows that searches on “Thanksgiving recipes” are primarily driving clicks to FoodNetwork.com, AllRecipes.com, and TasteofHome.com, all of which received a higher share of traffic from the search term as compared with 2010. The websites of CPG companies such as McCormick, Hidden Valley, Betty Crocker, and Kraft Foods have also experienced gains in traffic from searches on ‘thanksgiving recipes’ year over year, most notably from use of paid search.

Despite the fact that search term variation “healthy Thanksgiving recipes” nearly tripled year over year, the general trend shows that there are more variations for “deep fried turkey” and “turducken” (which consists of a chicken stuffed into a duck, which is stuffed into a turkey) , although there were a higher number of these search term variations last year.

Thanks to Lauren Rice, Analyst with the Custom Data & Analysis team, for today's iPhone analysis.

Traffic to websites dedicated to Black Friday information, such as BlackFriday.info and BFads.net, also increased 15% year-over-year. These websites capture a significant share of Black Friday-related searches; however, there is significant anticipation each year around the release of promotions from specific retailers, whose brand names appear frequently in Black Friday-related searches. Wal-mart is the retailers to appear most frequently, which has also translated into Walmart.com directly capturing a higher share of Black Friday searches. For the 4 weeks ending November 12, 2011, Walmart.com received 10% of Black Friday-related terms, up 9 percentage points from the same time frame last year.

The impact of Wal-mart’s Black Friday sale is also key to driving traffic to the Black Friday websites, where traffic jumped 152% from the previous day when Wal-Mart released information about Black Friday promotions on November 10th. Total visits to Walmart.com also increased 15% on November 10th as compared to the previous day.

One driver behind the increased visits to the Retail 500 is the audience, which over-indexes against the population for the most affluent Mosaic Groups: Power Elite (over-indexes for household incomes of $125k and up), Flourishing Families (over-indexes for household incomes between $75k and $250k), Booming with Confidence (over-indexes for household incomes over $75k), Suburban Style (over-indexes for household incomes of $75k to $175k). These 4 Mosaic Groups represented 28% of the visits to the Retail 500 for the 12 weeks ending October 22, 2011. While there may be anxiety around consumers’ ability to spend during the holidays, purchases from affluent segments may help offset the decreased buying power of those with lower household incomes.

Hitwise daily search data from the day of the announcement, October 4th revealed that the top keywords used in searches for iPhone on October 4th included content related to release date, Sprint, and Siri (the “virtual personal assistant” that will debut with the 4S model). Additionally, the variations of “iPhone” combined with the terms “vs” or “compare” highlights that web users were comparing the iPhone 4S with Android devices (specifically the Samsung Galaxy S2 and Motorola Droid Bionic) and the Blackberry Torch.

When compared with previous iPhone releases and upgrades, data from the past three years shows that all searches for “iPhone” peaked the week ending June 26, 2010 which coincided with the launch of the iPhone 4 last year. The addition of Verizon and Sprint in addition to AT&T were also strong drivers of interest.

Thanks to Lauren Rice, Analyst with the Custom Data & Analysis team, for today's iPhone analysis.

In July 2011, Zulily.com, a website offering sales targeted for women and babies/kids, captured the highest market share of visits at 16%, followed by Ideeli and LivingSocial Escapes. Amazon’s MyHabit ranked 11th, out of the 87 websites in the custom category after only 2 months in operation.

Several of the major players over the past six months, the total visits to Ideeli increased 42%, Gilt.com up 14% and Nordstrom’s Hautelook up 8% for July 2011 as compared to February 2011. Total visits for MyHabit jumped 128% for July 2011 as compared to May 2011 when the website launched.

The audience for Flash Sales continues to be attractive, and willing to shop – over-indexing against the online population for household incomes over $100k and creditworthy VantageScores of A and B.

To understand the initial impact, we compared the total visits to NYTimes.com for a 12 day period before the launch of the pay wall to the 12 days following the launch. For the majority of the days, there was a decrease in the overall visits between 5% and 15%. The one exception was Saturday, April 9th, 2011 where there was a 7% increase, likely due to visitors seeking news around the potential government shutdown and ongoing budget discussions.

The effect of the pay wall has been somewhat stronger upon the total page views for the NYTimes.com, with the same comparison of a 12 day period before the launch of the pay wall to the 12 days following the launch. For all 12 days, there was a decline in total page views which ranged between 11% and 30%.

One caveat to the 20 article limit is to access NYTimes.com through search engines like Google and social networking websites like Facebook and Twitter. While using these sources could be a clever workaround for a reader hoping not to pay, to date there has not been a significant difference in the share of upstream traffic from both search and social networks to NYTimes.com before and after the launch of the paywall.