As Christmas rapidly approaches, searches on the term gift cards have increased 14 percent compared to 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.

Top U.S. Searches for "Gift Cards" for the four weeks ending Dec. 15, 2007
Branded Searches	Search Percentage	Non-branded Searches	Search Percentage
visa gift cards	7.31%	gift cards	9.82%
american express gift cards	2.08%	free gift cards	2.00%
walmart gift cards	1.37%	discount gift cards	1.04%
itunes gift cards	1.20%	restaurant gift cards	0.97%
buy visa gift cards	1.12%	gas gift cards	0.81%
free visa gift cards	0.96%	charity gift cards	0.64%
best buy gift cards	0.90%	discounted gift cards	0.64%
target gift cards	0.80%	gift cards online	0.56%
mastercard gift cards	0.64%	prepaid gift cards	0.48%
hess gift cards	0.56%	online gift cards	0.48%
Source: Hitwise

Labels: HitWise