As hard as retailers, both online and in the real world, compete for sales over the long Thanksgiving holiday weekend, so to do online and research firms compete to see which can report sales figures most quickly and accurately. And because there’s not much else to write about over the holiday weekend expect crowded airports and football games, retail numbers take on a life of their own.

Here are some of the latest numbers:

From Experian, the retailers getting the most searches on Cyber Monday are Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT), Best Buy Co. Inc. (NYSE: BBY), Amazon.com Inc. (NYSE: AMZN), Sears Holdings Corp. (NASDAQ: SHLD), and Target Corp. (NYSE: TGT). The most searched for product is the Kindle Fire, followed by Uggs (footwear from Decker Outdoor Sports Inc. (NASDAQ: DECK), iPads and iPods from Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL), Legos, and the Wii U game console from Nintendo.

The five hot products, according to Experian’s count of “in stock” searches were the Wii U, Monster High Dolls, Hero 3 (which could be any number of video games), and the iPhone 5.

Other interesting details from Experian:

• Online retail traffic was down 1% on Black Friday compared with Thanksgiving Day traffic
• Amazon received the most visits of any online retailer on Black Friday, Walmart was next
• Best Buy was the third most visited site, followed by Target
• J.C. Penney Co. Inc. (NYSE: JCP) was the fifth most visited site on Black Friday and, among the top five, had the largest gain day-over-day from Thanksgiving Day, up 26%
• Apple posted a 99% day-over-day gain, the largest of the top 20 retail sites

International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE: IBM) reports a 24.1% gain in Cyber Monday traffic and 12% of the traffic is coming from mobile devices. Online sales today are expected to hit top last year’s total of $1.25 billion, but the early traffic on Thanksgiving Day and the increase in online shopping on Black Friday could lower the day’s total somewhat.

Paul Ausick

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