As the Government hiked UK VAT rates back to 17.5% from 15% on 1 January, search terms relating to the change have rocketed.
Terms including 'VAT increase 2010', 'VAT rate change' and 'when does VAT go back to 17.5%' increased by half last week across all search engines.
Nearly 50% of those searching for information about the VAT increase ended up visiting the , while 13.3% visited news sources for more information.
Another 12.9% of those searching visited business and financial sites, which paid for 26.8% of the traffic they received with business information sites such as Business Link bidding aggressively on a number of terms.
Only 4.2% of searches went to retail websites, although the sector saw a surge in the traffic the week before with consumers trying to grab last-minute bargains before the rate increase.
Between 21 December and 2 January, UK Internet visits to retail websites increased by 13%. The increase in that period was only 2% the previous year.
The biggest increase during that period was in the house and garden sector, where retailers experienced a 67% increase in traffic.
Other sectors selling big ticket items also experienced above average increases, with the sport and fitness, computers and appliances and electronics categories all performing well.