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Compete Ranks Top 50 Web Sites for November 2009

‘Tis the Season for Online Bargain Hunting; Consumers Gear Up for a High Tech Holiday

BOSTON – (December 23, 2009) /PRNewswire/ — Compete, a Kantar Media company, today released its ranking of the top 50 Web sites for November 2009. Despite continued concerns surrounding the economic recovery, holiday shoppers flocked to the Web in November. Of the 20 fastest growing Web categories last month, 13 were shopping related. November 2009 saw consumers shopping online for home and garden merchandise, searching for rebates and reading shopping blogs in record numbers.

Hunting for Bargains

In the search category, bargain and coupon sites drew heavy traffic – 42.6 million unique visitors (UVs) – in November. Leading coupon site RetailmeNot.com was among the fastest growing sites overall, with a traffic increase of 36 percent month-over-month to reach 9.96 million UVs. Pricegrabber.com, the comparison shopping site, also benefited from deal-hunting consumers (7.7 million UVs) with 36 percent growth over November.

A High Tech Holiday

If Web traffic is an accurate representation, Santa will be wrapping up a sleigh full of electronics this Christmas. In fact, 73.7 million consumers shopped for electronics in November, a 12 percent increase over 2008. Best Buy saw one of the month’s most dramatic Web site traffic increases – 74.6 percent month-over-month; the electronics retailer drew 29.5 million UVs to BestBuy.com. Gamestop.com (6.2 million UVs) and Newegg.com (5.9 million UVs) were also among the top gainers in November.

Holiday Shopping in Full Swing

Among the fastest growing Web categories in November, jewelry shopping sites grew by more than 39 percent to reach 8.2 million unique visitors (UVs), while children and baby needs shopping sites saw traffic increase by 31 percent to 31.4 million UVs. In addition, 40.2 million consumers visited games, music and movie shopping sites in November, and 46.7 million shopped for apparel online. Retail sites Amazon.com (76.5 million UVs), eBay.com (74.1 million UVs) and Walmart.com (51.9 million UVs) claimed three of the top 15 overall most heavily trafficked sites in November.

Information regarding aggregate Web categories is drawn from the Compete PRO Enterprise edition on Compete.com. For more information on the enterprise offering, please contact aprebluda@compete.com. For more of Compete’s holiday shopping data, please visit the company’s blog by clicking here.

About Compete

Compete, a Kantar Media company, helps the world’s top brands improve their marketing based on the online behavior of millions of consumers. Leading marketers such as Carlson Hotels Worldwide, Hyundai Motor America, Upromise, Chrysler, and Verizon Wireless rely on Compete's services to create effective online experiences and highly profitable advertising campaigns. Compete’s online behavior database—the largest in the industry—makes the Web as ingrained in marketing as it is in people’s lives. Compete was founded in 2000 and is located in Boston, MA, with offices throughout the U.S. For more information about us, please visit http://www.competeinc.com/, or to join the conversation visit http://www.compete.com/.

About Kantar

Kantar is one of the world's largest insight, information and consultancy networks. By uniting the diverse talents of its 13 specialist companies, the group aims to become the pre-eminent provider of compelling and inspirational insights for the global business community. Its 26,500 employees work across 95 countries and across the whole spectrum of research and consultancy disciplines, enabling the group to offer clients business insights at each and every point of the consumer cycle. The group’s services are employed by over half of the Fortune Top 500 companies.
For further information, please visit us at www.kantar.com