Santa may reside in the North Pole, but he has some elves working for him in Tidewater. Christmas.com Inc., a holiday Web site based in Norfolk, was named the top-rated Christmas site in 1999 by popular search engines Yahoo, Excite and Google.

Founders Jason Scott, Keith Basil and Mark Imbriaco expect even more interest this year. Some 8 million people may click on the Christmas.com Web site this season. "Last year we had 3 million visitors between November and December," says Scott, chief communications officer. With the help of an enhanced Web site and new ventures, Christmas.com’s executives are confident that even more holiday browsers will find their site.

When Christmas.com started in 1998, most of its content was free entertainment anchored by holiday recipes, traditions, games and trivia. The bulk of the company’s revenues came from advertisers such as Mattel, Visa, Disney and Sprint. Christmas.com’s five employees spent most of 2000 revamping the site to include Macy’s, Barnes & Noble and other national retailers. A new partnership with Herndon-based Single Shop Inc. links shoppers with online retailers Christmas.com visitors can complete online wish lists that friends and relatives can easily access. Last year many Christmas.com visitors were surprised to find it sold no holiday decorations. The company remedied that by buying ChristmasMarket.com and its directory of 13,000 businesses that sell holiday decorations. The company also closed a deal with Selling Christmas Decorations, a New Jersey-based trade publication that is going online through Christmas.com.

In the volatile world of e-commerce, Scott maintains that Christmas.com is among the few profitable dot-com companies, although he declines to reveal revenue figures. However, he expects the firm’s new alliances "will get us into the business-to-business side of the holiday. ... Christmas is a $5 billion industry, and we plan to be active in every aspect of it."