The official start of the holiday shopping season saw Americans flock to online retail sites, boosting several categories, including toys, consumer electronics and department stores, to double-digit traffic gains in November, according to comScore.

Google has launched a site dedicated to offering holiday gift ideas for shoppers along with ways to save on purchases using Google Product Search and Google Checkout.

From the Official Google Blog. "Our Product Search team recently pored over millions of aggregated (and anonymous) search queries to put together some of the most popular products people are searching for."

Amazon.com has unveiled a "Holiday Customer Review Team" that consists of half a dozen of its most active reviewers.

Amazon says the goal of the review team is to "provide fellow Amazon customers with top gift picks for the season as well as helpful tips on cutting costs over the holidays."

The reviewers have been given access to some of Amazon’s most popular Black Friday deals so they can offer up their opinions on the items with other shoppers.

The majority of Generation-Y (70%) said they will shop both online and at retail stores this holiday season, according to a survey from market researcher Peanut Labs.

Online shoppers researched product information 11 percent and 27 percent more on Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday respectively than they did on Cyber Monday, according to research from WebCollage.

About one in three shoppers (34%), in the UK will do the majority of their shopping online, according to comparison-shopping Web site Savebuckets.

A new report form Nielsen Online examines the reasons shoppers turn to the Internet during the holiday season.

Despite a slow start in November, online US non-travel retail topped $7 billion for the first 18 days of the holiday season, an increase of $1 billion from the same period in 2006.

At some point we may see Santa actually holding a Jack-o-lantern, unless these folks have their way. Whatever’s too early offline though isn’t online in terms of preparing your online store for the holiday season.

Last minute gift shopping to do? Gift cards have increasingly been a choice for late shoppers, while the t-shirt purveyors at GoodStorm suggest giving a wearable, customizable present.

The brick and mortar storefronts crowded with bargain-seeking shoppers on Black Friday had plenty of traffic at their online counterparts the day before, as shoppers sought refuge from relatives and chores by spending some quality time with their Internet connections and online retailers.