M&S has been named the most popular supermarket for the Christmas food shop, with shoppers racking up an impressive 25,000 Google searches for ‘M&S  Christmas food’, more than double the amount of searches made for the supermarket which came in second place.

The high street giant – which is famed for its Christmas food and drink selection – has more than 90 dedicated Christmas items available to order, although at the time of going to press M&S had already sold out of more than half (53%) of these lines.

The Google search data also revealed that the  second  most popular supermarket in the UK for Christmas food is Waitrose, with 10,000 monthly Google searches.

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This was followed by Sainsbury’s, which placed third with 7,300 average monthly searches – a 50% decrease in searches for its Christmas food compared to this time last year, according to the research from  New Casinos.

The research also analysed Google Trends to discover when the nation starts planning its Christmas feast, with the interest in ‘Christmas food shop’ typically starting to rise in September.

M&S has been the most  popular supermarket for shoppers browsing for Christmas food for five of the past six years, with “Waitrose Christmas food” winning the festive food fight in 2018.

Tesco was revealed as the fourth most popular – despite its World Cup boost – with 7,100 monthly Google searches for its Christmas range, followed by Aldi (4,400), Morrisons (4,100), Iceland (2,100), Asda (1,900) and Lidl (1,300).