Local media joined the predictable avalanche of national press coverage on the Cyber Monday holiday online shopping phenomenon. However, data from a website tracking online retail spending suggest that online sales grew tremendously in the three weeks leading up to Thanksgiving.

Even before Black Friday, comScore reported that more than $9.3 billion already had been spent online during the month of November, up more than 16 percent from 2006.

And, apparently shoppers didn’t wait even for those bricks-and-mortar stores that opened their doors at the stroke of midnight following the holiday. Online retail spending on Thanksgiving Day soared by nearly 30 percent over the previous year, reaching $272 million.

Black Friday showed a similar trend with sales rising more than 22 percent to more than $531 million. Cyber Monday topped out at $733 million. In comparison, last year’s Cyber Monday sales were $608 million.

Nielsen Online, which tracks unique visitor hits to more than 120 online retail sites representative of the industry, reported that Black Friday cyber traffic increased by 10 percent to more than 21.2 million unique visitor hits.

In particular shoppers were drawn to consumer electronics products as evidenced by price incentives that are being aggressively promoted by online retailers eager to compete with traffic in the physical stores. InterActive Corp and Amazon led the pack for Black Friday traffic, well ahead of the online operations for Wal-Mart and Target, which placed third and fourth respectively. Farther behind were the online centers for Best Buy, Circuit City, and Sears. Apple and Dell took eighth and ninth place, respectively and JCPenney made the top 10. eMarketer, an industry publication, found that “many traditional retailers are offering the same bargains on their Web sites as in their stores.”