• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, November 30, 2009

An interesting phenomenon occurred on the way to Black Friday this holiday season: Many retail stores began offering brick-and-mortar specials, online, as early as the prior Monday before Thanksgiving Day -- and some as early as Nov. 1 -- rather than waiting until the following week's traditional Cyber Monday.

Retailers took the cue after noticing consumers began searching early in the month for deals. Some offered discounts on merchandise as early as Nov. 1, looking for ways to stretch out the early holiday shopping season, according to Joe Davis, Coremetrics president and CEO.

The Monday before Thanksgiving Day has historically been "descent" day online, with sales typically dropping off Tuesday and Wednesday. Thursday hasn't been great, either. On Black Friday, sales typically start to pick up in anticipation of a boom on Monday.

This year, things changed. Sales growth began to ramp up in early November and continued through the week of Thanksgiving. "We began to see Black Friday deals online as early as last Monday, but the majority of the specials were offered to online customers on Thanksgiving Day," Davis says.

That means those Americans who finished eating their turkey early and camped outside retail brick-and-mortar stores like Best Buy could have grabbed a computer instead, and searched online for special deals.

It appears many consumers did. Online sales Thanksgiving Day rose 10% to $318 million, according to comScore. The research firm reports consumers spent $595 million online Black Friday, up 11%, making it the second heaviest online spending day to date in 2009. For the entire month of November, comScore reports consumers spending $10.57 billion online, up 3% compared with the same time period in 2008.

According to Google Insights for Search (the source for the all info in the next three paragraphs), searches for the keyword term "black friday" on Thanksgiving and Black Friday rose more than 20%, compared with the prior year. Add the word "online" to the original "black friday," and searches jumped to 25%. Removing the word "online" and replacing the phrase with "sales" made searches jump to 50%.

Searches for "black friday ads" on Thanksgiving and Black Friday rose more than 50%, compared with the prior year. Searches for "Target Black Friday & Walmart Black Friday" jumped more than 75%, compared with the same time in 2008.

Searches focused on deals as well. On Thanksgiving and Black Friday, searches on the word "sales" rose more than 25%; searches for "printable coupons" jumped 50%, compared with the prior year.

Category searches also did well. Searches related to the "apparel" category on Thanksgiving and Black Friday rose 50%; "consumer electronics" more than tripled; home appliances," up 25%; "home furnishings," up 10%; and "toys" jumped 50%, year over year.

Among the fastest rising searches on Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday, according to Google Hot Trends, were some previously cited, as well as "Toys R Us Black Friday Sale," "Kohls Black Friday Ad" and "Black Friday Computer Deals."