It looks like not all online retailers were as lucky as Amazon this past holiday season, as overall online sales declined three percent from the same period last year. This is part of a larger trend, which saw online sales throughout the entire fourth quarter drop four percent from 2007. This calculation doesn't take into account sales through auction sites like eBay, which can make up a significant fraction of total online sales. The figures show the first time holiday sales have failed to grow since comScore began monitoring online sales in 2001.

Although it doesn't necessarily reflect an increase in sales, site visits did go up for some companies, including Amazon. Apple shows an visitor increase of almost twenty percent from last year. Wal-Mart also got a traffic bump, so it's likely the company may have increased its online sales as well. Traffic heavily dropped for other companies, including troubled retailer Circuit City. Dell and Overstock.com both took traffic hits of over fifteen percent versus 2007.

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