On Monday, newspaper Web sites got an indication of whether they’re efforts to brand themselves as outlets for local shopping are working.

The Monday after Black Friday is one of the year’s biggest days for online shopping traffic.

Coincidentally, online traffic for newspapers has traditionally been pretty dead throughout the whole Thanksgiving period. The implication is that although users go online in huge numbers, they don't visit the newspaper site.

That should have changed this year, if the business folks were right.

Driven by the allure of new revenue, most of the largest newspaper sites have launched comprehensive “shopping” sections. Readers had a lot of time to get acquainted with these new services during the past year. But I doubt they are very interested.

Check your shopping stats. If there isn’t a spike in usage, the section is failing. If there is a spike, the section is on the right track.

Most shopping sections are failing when judged by this measure.

Instead, most shopping sections are judged by the amount of money they make. Advertisers are often part of the section only as a forced upsell. That creates a lot of empty revenue.

It's time for the pundits to put up or shut up, as they say. Show us the stats. Anyone have solid numbers to backup opinions on what you all think is working and what isn’t?