Retail words of the week: Wellington boots, tikka, Gmarket

Retail search terms around the world with the largest increase in hits for the week ending December 4 according to Experian Hitwise.*

As the severe winter weather continues across most of Northern Europe, residents of the United Kingdom were searching for " wellington boots ." In addition to the weather, an episode of hit UK TV show The Apprentice, in which budding business men and women have to complete a variety of tasks set by entrepreneur Alan Sugar, also had an impact on this week's search results. In a recent episode contestants were tasked with finding " blue book" and " tikka," two of the most searched-for terms in the UK this week; while " tikka" generates over 6,340,000 Google results, the object in question is in fact not a curry, but a small piece of Indian jewelry, and " blue book" refers to the textbook London taxi drivers study before taking their professional exams.

Unsurprisingly in the US the majority of search terms were related to Cyber Monday, the Monday after the Thanksgiving on November 27, when online retailers offer large discounts on a variety of products. The top searches with the attached phrase " cyber Monday 2010" were " target," " sears," " barnes and noble," "jcpenney," " Kmart" and " Toys R Us." 

In Singapore internet users were searching for online retailers " eBay," " eBay Singapore" and " Amazon"; Swedish furniture shop IKEA, which has two branches in Singapore, was also a popular search term. The sixth most popular search term in Singapore was " gmarket," referring to a new online auction and shopping site with branches in Singapore, Korea, Japan and Indonesia.

Online ticket retailer " ticketec," consumer goods store " Target" and " Toys R Us" were all popular search terms in Australia. According to the website of Toys R Us Australia the top ten toys include Zhu Zhu interactive hamsters, Barbie dolls and Beyblades - toys loosely based on spinning tops inspired by the anime series Beyblade.

Experian Hitwise* - Fast-moving search terms under the industry category Shopping and Classifieds, ranked by the largest percentage increase for the week ending December 4 compared with the week ending November 27.