Yahoo! holiday shopping orders soar

Yahoo! (Nasdaq:YHOO) said its shopping site, which offers more than 8,500 merchants, processed more orders in the five days between Dec. 13 and Dec. 17 than the entire holiday shopping season last year.

Yahoo said the most-sought items on its shopping site were Nintendo Co. Ltd's Gameboy, watches, 3Com Corp.'s Palm V, and Mattel Inc.'s Barbie.

Order volume in the 30 days including Dec. 25 rose more than 110 percent from the 30 days leading up to and including the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday on Nov. 25.

WebSideStory, a San Diego Internet research firm, said last week that Yahoo! now accounts for close to 56 percent of all search engine referrals.

According to the WebSideStory data, Yahoo's nearest competitor among Internet search engines was CMGI Inc.'s Alta Vista, which handled 11.18 percent of all online search queries. ExciteAtHome Corp. came in third, with its excite.com portal handling 9.66 percent of Internet search traffic.