Yesterday Dave Winer, Patrick, and I were at the Metreon and said “let’s go see a movie.”

The week between Christmas and New Years Day saw 20 million songs downloaded, more than doubling the record set the week before Christmas, according Nielsen SoundScan and E-Commerce Times.

The numbers are in from a variety of metrics firms and it would appear that it was indeed a happy holiday season for online retailers. Online spending increased by 25% over last year as shoppers used their fingers rather than their elbows to secure clothing, electronics, and even a $94,000 pair of diamond earrings.

Well, the predictions are in and according to Investor’s Business Daily, Forrester Research, Inc. states that despite concerns over consumer confidence and the impact of gas prices, U.S. consumers will spend $18 billion online during this holiday season [2005].

This is a unique year for search engine marketers. In previous years, it could take anywhere from one to three months to see results from a website optimization.

JupiterResearch released their projections for the coming holiday season and they look promising. The report, “Holiday 2005 Forecast: Addressing The Impact of Macro-Economic Factors on Holiday Online Retail Sales,” examines not only promised higher percentages of sales but also some problems for the coming holiday season.

Ads delivered as part of MSN’s new contextual advertising offering should start hitting MSN search engine result pages in October.

End-of-year sales success means online retailers need to start focusing on holiday initiatives.

For many of us, it is time to start thinking about packing our suitcases and jetting off on our summer holidays/vacation.

A U.S. government inspector has placed the blame for holiday flight disruptions on US Airways.

The latest holiday eSpending report indicates that online shoppers in the U.S. spent $23.2 billion during the 2004 holiday season, excluding travel. This is 25 percent above 2003 spending.

VeriSign released e-commerce data showing that the 2004 holiday shopping season yielded a total of $8.8 billion in online shopping purchases, a 24 percent increase as compared to the same period last year.

From the early days of search engine optimization, keywords and content have always been vital to achieving your goals. Starting back in the days when we used to shove every slightly relevant keyword into our META tags, it has been obvious that search engines love text. The more complex and sophisticated the engines have gotten over the years, the more complex and sophisticated many writers have gotten with their search engine copywriting.

Amazon has finished its busiest holiday season ever during which time it set a single-day record with more than 2.8 million units ordered, or 32 items per second, worldwide.

Because of improved shipping and customer service capabilities, late shoppers took the Internet in record numbers, price-wise, this holiday season. Reports have the amount of money spent shopping online for the week ending December 19th was up 57% from last year’s numbers.

While visits to shopping sites are claiming a record share of total holiday season Web visits, search engines are continuing to contribute high levels of shopping referrals.

If you are having trouble deciding what to buy for gifts Yahoo has come to the rescue. Greg Gunwall, Sr. Product Manager of Yahoo! Shopping tells us what others are searching for and buying.

Hitwise announced in its Internet usage report that Google is dominating the holiday search engine traffic.

The Google Blog team has just made Christmas easier. They announced a new page on Google where all of the Google software downloads are neatly available for download from a single web page.

As people hustle and bustle about trying to get those last minute gift ideas ready before the big day hits, spending is up and sales run rampant, as marketers get ready for that special time of year.

eBay kicked off their spectacular holiday charity auction with a special Hummer H2 autographed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and personalized with the winning bidder’s name.