Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo! said its visitors spent an estimated $10.3 billion online (not all at Yahoo merchant partners, unfortunately for the portal) in the fourth quarter. Monday, Dec. 10, was the busiest day this holiday.

"The holiday season is a critical period for Yahoo! Shopping and we are proud to announce that our Yahoo! Shopping business has maintained extremely strong growth momentum," said Rob Solomon, vice president and general manager of Yahoo! Shopping.

Meanwhile, the portal introduced the Unwanted Gifts showcase, accessible from the front page of Yahoo! Auctions and the Post-Holiday sale center on Yahoo! Shopping, allowing consumers to auction off gifts that missed the mark and to shop for products they really want and to shop for post-season bargains. Yahoo! said the sales center will feature everything from exclusive online specials to major winter clearance sales offering 50 to 70 percent off.

"One person's lousy gift is another person's treasure," said Rich Godwin, senior brand manager for Yahoo! Auctions and Yahoo! Warehouse. "With our Unwanted Gifts section, gone are the days of waiting on long lines to return that less-than-perfect gift -- instead consumers can save time and earn money on Yahoo! Auctions.

Yahoo! said bargain shopping was one of the big themes this year as numerous merchant partners enticed consumers to shop online by offering exclusive online sales or attractive discounts.

The five most popular product categories on Yahoo! Shopping for the 2001 holiday shopping season were in order: Videogame consoles, digital cameras, laptop computers, toys and apparel.

Another portal with a shopping area, Terra Lycos, echoed Yahoo! on the bargain-hunting theme. Although it didn't release hard numbers, that portal said that of the 15 gift guide categories featured on "Holidays at Lycos," the "Bargains" and "Gifts Under $25" categories accounted for almost 25 percent of the guide's total traffic. The two most frequently clicked on merchant categories featured on the Lycos Shopping homepage were "Save up to 80%" and "Liquidations."

Elsewhere, privately held shopping comparison site DealTime said it recorded record-breaking financial performance during the holiday shopping season, with revenues for November doubling over last year. Traffic for the holiday season was up by more than 100 percent vs. last year, the company said.