Visa and American Express Top Gift Cards Searches

Overall gift card searches up 14 percent compared to 2006;
Traffic to top 100 retail websites up 12 percent compared to 2006

NEW YORK, NY - December 19, 2007 - As Christmas rapidly approaches, searches on the term "gift cards" have increased 14 percent compared to the same week in 2006, Hitwise reported today. Visa and American Express are the top two branded gift cards that were searched for last week.

Other top branded gift cards searches included Wal-Mart, iTunes, Best Buy, Target, MasterCard and Hess. The top non-branded gift card searches included terms such as free, discount, restaurant, gas, charity and prepaid.

“Gift cards are popular with shoppers again this holiday season as they become increasingly more socially acceptable than traditional gifts,” said Heather Dougherty, director of research, Hitwise. “One big trend this year is that consumers are looking for the gift cards which are more universally accepted across a variety of merchants, such as Visa or American Express, to provide recipients with the options to spend their cards wherever they need, which this year could include necessities like groceries or gas.”

For more Hitwise data on the gift card phenomena, please visit: http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1693271,00.html

OnlineHoliday Shopping Update:

• The Hitwise U.S. Retail 100 Index chart shows that visits to the websites within the Index were up one percent for the week ending Dec. 15, 2007 versus last week (Dec. 8, 2007). U.S.traffic is up 12 percent compared to the same week last year (Dec. 16, 2006).

• Amazon.com was the most visited website within the Retail Index last week, receiving 13 percent of U.S. visits. Walmart.com received the second-most visits with eight percent. CircuitCity.com was the biggest gainer for the week, as their website traffic increased 15 percent compared to the previous week.

• The Nintendo Wii and Uggs were the most popular product search terms sending visits to Shopping and Classifieds websites for the week ending Dec. 15, 2007. The terms “wii”, “nintendo wii”, “ugg boots” and “uggs” were the top four product searches. Nintendo Wii and Ugg searches made up 60 percent of the top 10 product searches for this past week making them the two hot product searches so far this season.

About Hitwise

Hitwise is the leading online competitive intelligence service. Only Hitwise provides its 1,400 clients around the world with daily insights on how their customers interact with a broad range of competitive websites, and how their competitors use different tactics to attract online customers.

Since 1997, Hitwise has pioneered a unique, network-based approach to Internet measurement. Through relationships with ISPs around the world, Hitwise’s patented methodology anonymously captures the online usage, search and conversion behavior of 25 million Internet users. This unprecedented volume of Internet usage data is seamlessly integrated into an easy to use, web-based service, designed to help marketers better plan, implement and report on a range of online marketing programs.

Hitwise, a subsidiary of Experian (FTS: EXPN) www.experiangroup.com operates in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore. More information about Hitwise is available at www.hitwise.com.

For up to date analysis of online trends, please visit the Hitwise Intelligence-Analyst Weblogs at http://weblogs.hitwise.com and the Hitwise Data Center at www.hitwise.com/datacenter.