Online Holiday Sales Expected to Hit $19 Billion

comScore estimates online holiday sales for non-travel purchases to rack up more than $19 billion in sales during the last two months of the year. That figure would mean a 24% growth over this time last year. Not bad at all.

Total online spending for the year is expected to fall just short of $83 billion, up 24% over last year's figure of $66.5 billion.

"Expectations across all channels for this holiday season have been dampened slightly by high gas prices and wavering consumer confidence," said Gian Fulgoni, Chairman and Co-Founder of comScore Networks. "However, e-commerce will remain strong as consumers continue to shift more of their holiday spending to the online channel because of the Web’s convenience and the savings available through its price comparison capabilities – not to mention the ability for consumers to save on fuel costs by cutting back on the need to drive to retail stores."

The fastest growth was expected among toys and electronics, no big surprise in a holiday season that will be ruled by products like iPods and Fly Pens. The study also showed a dramatic increase in use of comparison shopping search engines. These engines attracted nearly 55 million visitors last month, a 52% increase over last year.

According to the study the ten most popular shopping search engines are as follows:

• Shopping.com
• Shopzilla.com
• Yahoo! Shopping
• Nextag.com
• ShopLocal.com
• Shop.com
• inStore
• Froogle
• PriceGrabber
• MonsterMarketplace