Over the last few days the UK Internet population have been prolific online, in one of the busiest post-Christmas periods ever. Boxing Day was the busiest day of the year for online retailers again this year, but the sales have continued to perform ahead of last year's figures with 27 December being the second biggest online retail day of 2010. Post Christmas visits to the Shopping and Classifieds category have been significantly better this season than in previous years,

Earlier this week Experian revealed the real Middle Britain to bring sharp classification to what has previously been an overused and woolly term. Using Experian's consumer segmentation tool Mosaic, some 13.1 million people were identified as Middle Britain in the UK. At Hitwise we frequently use Mosaic classifications to show what type of websites are preferred by the different segments of society. What is Middle Britain like online?

UK Internet visits to retail websites increased by 32% between Christmas Eve )December 24th( and Christmas Day )December 25th(. With IMRG reporting that 4.8m British consumers spent £153m online yesterday , the real winners were the multichannel retailers. As the table below illustrates, eBay UK and Amazon UK were the most visited online retailers in the UK yesterday, while Apple iTunes was in fifth position as grateful recipients plugged in their new iPads,

The X Factor final this weekend is one of the most hotly talked about topics up and down the country and it seems everyone has an opinion on who is going to win this year's competition. Last year we correctly predicted that Joe McElderry would win the competition, this year the data suggests boyband One Direction will emerge as winners. Looking at all searches over the last 12 weeks for the final four contestants, the clear favourite would appear to be Cher,

The Red Sea coastal resort of Sharm el Sheikh was one of the fastest growing holiday destinations for British travellers of recent years before the shark attacks struck at the beginning of December, making a serious dent in Egypt's popularity as a tourist destination. In our winter travel report , Sharm el Sheikh was the fifth fastest moving destination of the quarter thanks to its growing popularity as a winter sun destination and its amazing diving facilities.

Running an effective social media campaign is no easy task for any company, but for a charity with limited marketing resources that challenge is especially difficult. Perhaps the greatest success to date of an excellent charitable social media campaign was the Nike Chalkbot, which promoted the LIVESTRONG campaign on the Tour de France raising awareness and money for the Lance Armstrong Foundation. Now Digital Death has leveraged the power of Facebook, YouTube and Twitter,

As December approaches with alarming rapidity the start of the party season will be swinging into action quicker than you can say "Secret Santa". With office Christmas parties and large family gatherings on the way online searches will inevitably turn to alcohol and finding the best drink deals for the festive season. The chart below shows that visits to alcohol vendors always peak during November and December, making this the key time for vendors in the industry.

Time to set the alarm clocks for 4am - Black Friday is almost here! Holiday shoppers are already researching the Black Friday promotions with searches around Black Friday up 31% and the share of visits to Black Friday websites up 18% last week over the week before Thanksgiving and Black Friday last year. The top 5 websites captured 81% of all visits to the custom category of Black Friday websites and traffic to Black-Friday.net and BlackFriday.