Surfers in the UK have already started their Christmas shopping, according to new figures from web monitoring firm Hitwise. 

Searches for 'Christmas gifts' have increased 62 per cent in the past week, and are up a staggering 81 per cent over last year.

The market share of UK visits to sites on the Hitwise UK 100 Retail Index, a list of the top 100 UK retailers, was up two per cent last week over the same week in 2005 and up six per cent over 2004.

"Based on our analysis, we expect that visits to retail websites will reach a tipping point this week and will begin their rapid seasonal rise," said Heather Hopkins, vice president of research at Hitwise UK.

"Early signs are good for a strong Christmas online, with retail websites likely to hit the growth rate of eight per cent year-on-year in December."

Video games and consoles are set to be very popular this Christmas. Several of the top product related search terms sending visits to retail websites were for video game consoles.

In particular, 'nintendo ds' was among the top 20 product search terms sending visits to retail websites.

Nintendo's forthcoming Wii console is likely to be a hit this Christmas, with UK internet searches soaring ahead of the console's UK release on 8 December. 

UK internet searches for 'nintendo wii' have increased eightfold in the past three months, more rapidly than for other leading gaming consoles.

UK searches for 'nintendo ds lite' and 'playstation 3' both tripled in the past three months, while searches for 'nintendo ds' doubled.

This in spite of the delays announced for the PlayStation 3, which is due to be released in Europe in March. 

Searches for video games were also popular. 'Casino royale', 'james bond', 'xbox games' and 'spiderman 3' were all among the top terms sending visits to video and games websites last week.