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Thanksgiving Busiest Day Online this Holiday Season as Traffic Increases 20 Percent versus 2006

Walmart.com most visited retail website on Thanksgiving Day 2007
Black Friday traffic increases 16 percent

NEW YORK, NY - November 26, 2007 - U.S. traffic on Thanksgiving Day in 2007 increased 20 percent compared to Thanksgiving 2006, Hitwise reported today. This is the fourth year in a row that traffic has peaked on Thanksgiving Day making it the busiest day online during the holiday season.

The Hitwise Top 100 Retail Index, which is comprised of the top 100 retail websites, received 6.84 percent of all U.S. visits on Nov. 22, 2007 representing an increase of 20 percent versus Nov. 23, 2006, which received 5.84 percent of visits.  Online traffic on Black Friday, Nov. 23, 2007, increased 16 percent versus the same day in 2006.

"The increase in traffic to retail sites on Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday signals a strong online holiday season," said Heather Dougherty, director of research at Hitwise. "The big box retailers are taking advantage of their sites to heavily promote both in-store offerings and online-only specials to drive traffic even while stores are closed to capture holiday dollars."

Bricks and Mortar Retailers Top Websites for Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday

For the third year in a row, Walmart.com was the most visited retail website on Thanksgiving Day 2007 receiving 15.8 percent of visits among the top 100 retail websites. BestBuy.com and CircuitCity.com were the second and third most visited websites on Thanksgiving respectively, followed by Amazon.com and Target.com. On Black Friday, Wal-Mart was the most visited website followed by Amazon. Best Buy, Target and CircuitCity rounded out the top five most visited websites.

Thanksgiving and Black Friday stats:

• Online traffic to a custom category of leading Black Friday advertising websites increased 45 percent on Thanksgiving and 43 percent on Black Friday, respectively, compared to last year.

• Comparison shopping websites saw an increase in the online market share of visits on Thanksgiving and Black Friday compared to 2006. Online traffic to a custom category of leading comparison shopping websites increased 58 percent on Thanksgiving and 39 percent on Black Friday compared to last year.

About Hitwise

Hitwise is the leading online competitive intelligence service. Only Hitwise provides its 1,400 clients around the world with daily insights on how their customers interact with a broad range of competitive websites, and how their competitors use different tactics to attract online customers.

Since 1997, Hitwise has pioneered a unique, network-based approach to Internet measurement. Through relationships with ISPs around the world, Hitwise’s patented methodology anonymously captures the online usage, search and conversion behavior of 25 million Internet users. This unprecedented volume of Internet usage data is seamlessly integrated into an easy to use, web-based service, designed to help marketers better plan, implement and report on a range of online marketing programs.

Hitwise, a subsidiary of Experian (FTS: EXPN) www.experiangroup.com operates in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore. More information about Hitwise is available at www.hitwise.com.

For up to date analysis of online trends, please visit the Hitwise Intelligence-Analyst Weblogs at http://weblogs.hitwise.com and the Hitwise Data Center at www.hitwise.com/datacenter.