Holiday Bounty

Sales at U.S. online retailers rose 13.1 percent in the last three months of 2001 from a year earlier, the government said Wednesday, as more shoppers turned to the Internet for holiday purchases.

Unlike the main retail sales report released by the government, the online retail sales figures are not seasonally adjusted to account for holidays or other seasonal factors. Total retail sales over the Web in 2001 were $32.6 billion, up 19.3 percent from 2000.

In the fourth quarter, the proportion of e-commerce sales among all sales was the highest since the government began tracking the data in the last quarter of 1999. The previous high was 1.1 percent of all sales in the fourth quarter of 2000.

The government tally is based on a survey of 11,000 retailers and does not include some popular online purchases, such as airline and concert tickets or spending at online brokerages.