Apparently, the Fourth of July is not just for fireworks, baseball and hot-dog-eating contests.

These days, it’s seen as a “car-shopping holiday” — and one with a big online focus.

According to a Dealer.com analysis of dealership website activity, Web visits per dealership during the Fourth of July weekend earlier this month were 73 higher than other weekends in the first half of the year.

“It certainly is typical that the July 4th weekend is a strong weekend,” James Grace, director of analytics and product management at Dealer.com, said in a phone interview.

“For comparison’s sake, though, last year, that percentage was 56 percent,” he said. “While it normally is a strong weekend, it was stronger than normal this year.”

And vehicle detail page visits were up 48 percent compared to other weekends, Dealer.com said. (It was up by the same amount in 2015.)

There was a 35-percent lift in desktop traffic compared to other weekends (11-percent gain in 2015), with smartphone traffic up 61 percent (69 percent in 2015).  

In addition to July 4 being a holiday weekend — giving folks more time to car shop — the fact that it’s at the beginning of the month means dealers and automakers have the chance to get the month off to a strong start.

“So you’re going to see people investing in their marketing at the front-end of the month in order to drive a strong July,” Grace said.

Summer is typically stronger than other parts of the year for car shopping, in general, Grace said, and automakers also push advertising during this time of year.

Plus, said Dealer.com director of digital marketing Andy MacLeay said, dealers and automakers tend to push marketing spend just before the summer season as well, which plays a part.

And traffic was going up heading into the Fourth of July weekend to begin with.

In June, visits per dealer website were up 14 percent year-over-year.

MacLeay said Dealer.com has seen dealerships putting a bigger emphasis on the websites the past few years.

“For us, the big change that’s happening now is, you’re moving the car dealership website from a spot where people go and maybe research a car and then possibly leave a lead or make a phone call, to somewhere where shoppers are expecting to transact,” MacLeay said.

“They’re expecting to get done certain portions of the car-buying process online. And that’s really what we’re developing towards, is the ability to reduce the amount of time that the consumer is in the dealership doing the bits and pieces of the car-shopping process that are maybe not the most fun to do or are the most time-consuming,” he said.

The development and marketing focus for Dealer.com, MacLeay said,  is “moving from this idea of 'we’re just trying to get someone to leave us a lead' to 'we’re actually trying to get somebody to shop for a car.'”