Clearly Google still has a near monopoly on the UK search market, but Microsoft and Yahoo will still be pleased that they are finally clawing back market share, no matter how small the increments. 

The data from Experian Hitwise also shows that there was a record 2.8bn visits to UK retail sites in December, with 656m of these occurring in the week ending December 29.

This equates to a 30% increase year-on-year, which was in no small part driven by a number of major retailers beginning their sales early.

For example, John Lewis started its sale at 5pm on Christmas Eve and as a result achieved its busiest ever online shopping day.

We previously reported separate data from Experian which showed that Christmas 2012 was the busiest ever for online retailers in the UK, with consumers making 84m visits to retail websites on Christmas Eve and 107m visits on Christmas Day. This is an increase of 86% and 71% respectively compared to 2011.

Amazon came out on top in the battle of the retailers, leapfrogging eBay to become the most visited ecommerce site on Christmas Day with more than 12% of all visits.

However Boxing Day eclipsed the previous two days to become the busiest day ever for online retail. UK consumers spent 14m hours online and made 113m visits to online retail sites, an increase of 17% from 2011.

And a separate report from Kenshoo shows that Christmas proved to be expensive for UK retail paid search marketers, as average CPCs increased by a third (30%) peaking at around £0.35.

There were predictable spikes in search spend at the beginning of December as retailers tried to cash in on the consumer rush to buy gifts in time for Christmas.

The report also reveals that paid search impressions increased by 18% during the Christmas period, likely indicating that consumers are using search engines more frequently, however shoppers clicked on 2% fewer ads.

But despite the drop in clicks, retailers did a better job of turning visits into sales with conversion rates up 10% compared to 2011.