I  find this stuff  fascinating and maybe it’s because I work across both markets and see if first hand, but these two charts from Google Insights  paint an interesting picture.

Firstly, there’s no doubt that ‘shopping’ as a category is growing in Australia and the chart below clearly shows this. However what’s caught my eye is the stark differences between the size of the ‘interest spikes’ around the last quarter of each fiscal year.

In Australia the baseline in interest has been growing year on year at a healthy rate, and we are getting relatively strong spikes in Q4.

Yet in the the US, check out the pre-Christmas spikes in interest – huge!

You can’t see it in these charts, but the forecast for this year is for more of the same.

They’re in fact so large, that the baseline year on year interest is pretty flat.

Fascinating…

…and If you are planing to shop online this year, don’t forget to search for coupons on RetailMeNot.com. I never pay full price, so neither should you!