Hitwise: Searches for Apple Tablet rocket

The long rumoured Apple tablet is generating plenty of web traffic according to analysts Hitwise.

Billed as the leading source for insights about online marketing, e-commerce and industry trends, Hitwise found interest grew significantly in December as rumours of a January release date for the tablet spiked interest.

"Before the start of CES, the volume of searches for a portfolio of Apple Tablet related terms increased 8x," Heather Dougherty, Director, Research at Hitwise notes in a blog post.

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The long rumoured Apple tablet is generating plenty of web traffic according to analysts Hitwise.

Billed as the leading source for insights about online marketing, e-commerce and industry trends, Hitwise found interest grew significantly in December as rumours of a January release date for the tablet spiked interest.

"Before the start of CES, the volume of searches for a portfolio of Apple Tablet related terms increased 8x," Heather Dougherty, Director, Research at Hitwise notes in a blog post.

The most popular search term was 'Apple tablet,' followed by 'what is the Apple tablet,' 'Apple tablet rumors,' 'Apple tablet release date,' 'Apple tablet PC,' 'Apple iPod tablet,' 'Apple tablet,' 'Apple tablet computer,' 'i tablet Apple,' and 'Mac tablet.'

According to Hitwise, Yahoo! was the top website to receive traffic from Apple Tablet search terms for the week ending 2 January 2010, followed by CNET News.com and the Los Angeles Times.