• by Sarah Mahoney , December 1, 2009

While online retailers are still tallying up the receipts for America's Cyber Monday shopping spree, experts say the clearest trend so far is just how skillful consumers have become in online searches.

With a record number of shoppers clicking through bargains, "the past four days have really shown the solidification of the Internet as a primary research tool, both for shopping online but also for doing research before they go into stores," says Dan Schock, Google's retail industry director.

Search volume was up, and terms were increasingly sophisticated, with both "Black Friday Walmart" and "Black Friday Target" up 70% compared to last year, as were searches for "Cyber Monday." And proving that consumers are fleeter than ever in combining web-and-foot shopping, Google also reports a big increase in search requests for Walmart store maps.

The toys likely to emerge as bestsellers, based on Google's search records over the holiday weekend, are "Lego Rock Band," Power Wheels Jeep, Barbie Jeep Nerf guns, and Imaginext. In clothing, hot searches included Uggs on sale, Old Navy, Aeropostale, PacSun, and Vera Bradley. And on Cyber Monday itself, fastest-rising searches included Zhu Zhu Pets Cyber Monday, American Girl Cyber Monday, Cyber Monday iPod touch, and Nintendo DS Cyber Monday.

The National Retail Federation reports that while online lunch-hour sales were softer than expected, early morning and evening sales beat forecasts, showing that more consumers clicked from home than the office.

The NRF's shop.org division, based on a survey from BIGResearch, has projected that 96.5 million Americans had planned to shop Cyber Monday -- up from 85 million in 2008. With the big day successfully behind it, the Washington D.C.-based trade organization predicts that the next big surge in traffic will occur the week of Dec. 14, when shipping offers begin to expire.