Search remains a major source of visits to retail websites during the holiday season, with search engines and directories contributing 17.9 percent of all visits to the Shopping & Classifieds category for the week ended December 3, according to just-released numbers from Hitwise. Google led in search engine referrals, having provided 10.8 percent of all visits to online retailers. Yahoo Search and MSN Search accounted for 4.1 percent and 0.8 percent, respectively.

However, the greatest source of visits to the Shopping & Classifieds sites was shopping sites themselves, at 49.5 percent, as a result of online users' directly visiting several retailers within an internet session.

Bill Tancer, general manager of global research at Hitwise, said this "demonstrates that consumers continue to manually search and compare across several online retailers. Search engines and comparison shopping sites should consider this manual search behavior as proof of demand for better shopping and comparison search."

The top toy searches for the four weeks ended December 3 were "barbie," "american girl" and "build a bear." New entrants to the top 10 were "airsoft guns" and "jigsaw puzzles."

Top search terms driving traffic to the Shopping & Classifieds - Appliances and Electronics category were variations of "ipod" and "xbox 360."