With November upon us, Black Friday (November 27) and Cyber Monday (November 30) are just around the corner. Consumers are showing early interest - as we see in the Google Insights for Search graphs below, 'Black Friday' searches began increasing the week of August 2, 2009 versus mid-September in 2008 and 2007. And while everyone knows how crowded the malls are on Black Friday, note last year's online sales of $534MM on Black Friday. That's up a modest 1% over the previous year and during the height of the downturn in the economy. [1]
Cyber Monday is also increasingly top-of-mind. The term 'Cyber Monday' was first used in 2005 in the e-commerce community (coined by Shop.org) and was based on research that indicated that the vast majority of online retailers reported a significant increase in sales the Monday after Thanksgiving. As we see below, the uptick in searches for Cyber Monday started the week of September 13, 2009 versus mid-October in 2008 and 2007. Also of note, we saw e-Commerce sales on Cyber Monday reached $846M in 2008, up 15% over 2007.[1]
With both Black Friday and Cyber Monday driving even earlier consumer interest online this year, ensure that you are reaching these consumers through creative online promotional efforts now to ensure your brands and products are in the consideration set when consumers head in-store and online to buy.

Source: Google Internal, Insights for Search. [1] comScore Press Release, 12/3/08.

Posted by Eric Lopez, the Google Retail Team