May 201 sales for web based businesses have taken a large hit in sales as the global economy continues to struggle through a recovery. The loss of online sales was not only based on seasonal slowdowns, the gulf oil spill or the flat economy we are presently enjoying, it had more to due with a large infrastructure shake up at Google, arguably the worlds leading search engine.
Late April 2010, Google announced a quality change to their search algorithm, which is nothing new, since Google makes hundreds of changes each year. This update however affected sites in a way the dropped much of their targeted traffic resulting in a precipitous  drop in sales for many online businesses. In the end, this as blown into a perfect storm of conditions to cool the overall economy.
The effect on brick & mortar store is forthcoming as some online retailers cut back on purchases of non essential items.