Holiday shopping starts early at comparison sites, Hitwise says

It appears consumers are going online earlier this year to start their holiday shopping, based on the first release this season of the Hitwise Retail 100 index. The index tracks top U.S. e-commerce sites each week during the holidays.

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2.69% of U.S. web traffic went to those 100 large e-retailing sites during the week ended Nov. 3, a 13% increase over 2.38% during the same week a year ago. Comparison shopping sites were up 20%, and there was an especially large increase among shoppers 45 or over. Yahoo Shopping recorded a 46% increase in shoppers in that age group over a year ago, the largest gain in a category that also includes Smarter.com, BizRate, Shopzilla and NexTag.

Amazon easily held the top spot among e-commerce sites with 11.34% of the total traffic to the 100 leading retail sites. Walmart.com moved into second place this week, at 6.41%, switching places with Half.com, which had been No. 2 in the week ended Oct. 27.

Here are the top 10 e-commerce sites with share of visits to the top 100 sites and position the previous week: