After all that talk about gloom and doom, there's some good news emerging for retailers. comScore, a digital marketing intelligence company, reports that retail sites posted the largest audience gains during November, surpassing popular virtual hangouts such as social networking sites. The big winners for the month were toys, consumer electronics, and department stores. Traffic in each of those categories spiked 30 percent compared to October.

Looks like shoppers were tempted to buy their gifts from the comforts of their homes rather than venturing into stores. The Wall Street Journal reported that online spending grew 10%, to nearly $12.3 billion in November, compared to a year earlier, while Black Friday online spending grew 11% from the same day a year ago. Among the toy sites, Toysrus led the category with more than 14.8 million visitors (up 82 percent), ranking as the fourth top-gaining property in November, comScore reported. The champions in consumer electronics were BestBuy.com with nearly 25 million visitors and Walmart with 9.9 million visitors (up 139 percent).

Walmart also led the department store category with 46.2 million visitors (up 62 percent), followed by Target with 38.8 million (up 43 percent).

While the verdict has yet to come in on retailers' performance this holiday season, these numbers should definitely bring some much-needed cheer.