It appears that YouTube has been very busy.

As the holidays approach, are people going to do their shopping online or off? Well, both of course, but Hitwise shares some data that sees online shopping growth at 4.19% over the past four weeks, and that is up from 1.94% growth from the same period last year.

For those of you sitting around this evening either avoiding trick-or-treaters, or just simply looking for some ghostly entertainment to celebrate All Hallow’s Eve, Google has some special content set aside for you.

Not only are they featuring some Halloween Books on the front page of Google Book Search:

In the Halloween spirit, Google has of course supplied us with a "doodle" for the day, but the interesting part of this to me as fan of horror films is that the doodle was designed by Wes Craven.

We’re quickly approaching the end of October. For businesses, that can only mean one thing. The holiday season is nigh! For online businesses, this means that it’s time to kick-start the tactics you should have been using all year. The clock has already begun to tick for getting people to your site and for you to cash in on online shopping for the holidays.

Any interesting report is out today from Chase Paymentech, saying that the online holiday retail sales for 2007 grew by a whopping twenty nine percent.

Depending on your work schedule, this could be your first day back from a holiday vacation.  Here to greet you, then, is a collection of the themed stuff Google did while you were away.

For US-based online businesses, the day after Christmas means getting back to work, but that doesn’t mean the holiday shouldn’t be on one’s mind.

It’s nearly Christmas, and that means it’s time for sales of boots and heavy hats to increase.  Unless, that is, you’re in the Asia Pacific, where new Hitwise data uncovered an interest in Crocs and Oakley sunglasses.

oogle has removed the Video link on its search results pages with one to Google Product Search, relegating the very useful Video link to the “More” menu. The Video link is fourteen items down the More menu, making it a lot of work to reach. Previously, on any Google search, you could hit Video to get results from dozens of popular and unpopular video sites, making it the easiest way to find video on the internet. Now? Not so much.

With the holiday shopping season approaching, people want to buy presents.  An important part of buying things is paying for them, however, and so searches for credit cards are increasing.

Yahoo Search Marketing has been working with one of its travel advertisers, Pleasant Holidays, on an analysis of multi-channel keyword effectiveness.

Thank god for Microsoft

ClickTracks is offering a discount on both ClickTracks Analyzer and ClickTracks Optimizer.

Reuters has the latest Hitwise data for shopping-related web activity during December.

Holiday shopping this year looks to be going better than ever according to metrics released by Nielsen/NetRatings. Their eShopping Index saw a 29% increase from home on the day after Thanksgiving, garnering 17.2 million users over 100 online retailers.

Clear Channel and DAN Media will place big video screens in metro New York and Los Angeles malls, where they will display content from Yahoo! and advertising.

Online traffic gets extra big for the holidays not just for retailers but many other websites as well. People look for all types of information so visibility is potentially quite high, which means advertising dollars can be maximized if you plan early.

Thank you to the many well wishers who have emailed to wish us luck and congratulations with our new home. It has been a very busy few days of moving but we’re finally in and beginning to feel like we’re at home’.

One of the downsides of being a stay at home sole blogger is that on days when you can’t blog (because you are on holidays, sick or.moving house – your blogging can grind to a standstill.

WebTrends unveiled results from its first WebPosition Search Ranking study of how four major retailers use SEO and SEM strategies to attract online visitors.