WebProNews

The early birds are rising earlier this year as searches for Black Friday-related websites spike a bit earlier than last year.

Searches for "black friday ads" are up 91 percent compared to last year, according to Hitwise, continuing a year-over-year trend since 2005. Since that year, similar searches have increased 954 percent, with 2006 seeing a 452 percent increase over 2005.

Wal-Mart is the biggest offline winner in that search as its online presence enjoyed the most Black Friday traffic for the week ending November 10, followed by Best Buy, Circuit City, and Sears.

"Consumers are becoming increasingly more knowledgeable about the availability of Black Friday promotions online and are actively seeking out the websites which offer the advertisements before public release," said Heather Dougherty, director of research at Hitwise.

"Much to the chagrin of some retailers, shoppers are well-aware of the leaked promotions and are able to plan their Black Friday purchases before Thanksgiving arrives. While some retailers resist having their sales announced prematurely, others are embracing these sites as a customer acquisition opportunity."

Indeed that chagrin has extended to cease-and-desist orders from companies like Wal-Mart looking to quell webmasters' leaking of prices in advance. Wal-Mart recently sent out the C&D's to bfads.net, where prices were published as early as October.

Best Buy, Target and Kohls have targeted FatWallet for similar breaches in years past. However, it is not clear if there is actual legal basis to their demands as factual information cannot be copyrighted.

Amazon continues to be the most-visited Website in the retail category, receiving 11 percent of all visits, followed by Wal-Mart, with six percent.

Just what, exactly, are the people looking for? If Hitwise's top product searches are any indication, they're looking for iPods, Wiis, Uggs, Xbox 360s, and Playstation 3s.