After climbing steadily in search queries over the last 12 months, Ultrabooks as a term is just about passing the threshold into true mainstream consumer territory. The launch of Windows 8 and a number of eye-catching convertible Ultrabooks look to be helping in a big way. The latest evidence comes to us in the form of a new Ultrabook ad from Best Buy, the largest consumer electronics retailer in the U.S. The retailer is also offering a $100 discount on an Ultrabook when you turn in a working laptop.

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It has been suggested that one of Intel’s objectives for the Ultrabook program was to move the conversation away from netbooks, where the bottom line was price — which came complete with low profit margins. And who could blame them for wanting this? Sales of Apple’s premium-priced MacBook line were strong as ever while the PC laptop market was seeing a veritable explosion of small, inexpensive machines that were marketed for their low price more than their features or quality.

I must say, it seems to be working. Have a look at this graph of searches comparing ‘ultrabook’ (blue) and ‘netbook’ (red) Google web search queries in the last 12 months:

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