Ed: Confusing picture of Black Friday. Stock market drops on Monday, but 1929 chicken-little predictions have been plucked, roasted, and eaten.

Holiday Online Retail Traffic: Walmart And Amazon Duked It Out

According to Hitwise, U.S. visit numbers across all tracked retail categories declined for Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday 2008, with the exception of online-only shopping websites. Among the top 500 Retail sites, Walmart was the top visited on Thanksgiving Day, but Amazon.com took over as top visited Retail site on Black Friday.

Overall, the numbers showed an expected but sharp decline: the percentage of U.S. visits was down 11% on Thanksgiving Day in 2008 compared to last year, and U.S. traffic on Black Friday was down 5%. But online-only (not brick-and-mortar) stores, of which there are 100 in the list of 500 top retail websites, had a pretty good run: the percentage of U.S visits to those shot up 11% on Thanksgiving Day, and went up 10% on Black Friday compared to 2007.

Still according to the Hitwise report, the top visited retail website on Thanksgiving Day was Walmart.com, receiving 13.72% of U.S. visits, while Amazon.com was the second most visited with 9.56% of visits. BestBuy.com came in third with 6.05%.

Amazon.com took over the lead on Black Friday, receiving 11.06% of U.S. visits among the top 500 retail websites. Walmart.com was the second most visited with 9.88% of visits followed by Target.com with 4.62%.

Apple Black Friday Mac Sales 'Better Than Expected': Analyst (AAPL)

Dan Frommer | December 1, 2008 10:20 AM

Apple (AAPL) didn't offer deep discounts on its Macs or iPods during last week's "Black Friday" sale, and it didn't offer any discount on iPhones. But Mac sales were "better than expected," Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster says in a note today, and iPhone sales were "as expected."

Munster's team spent 10 hours counting Mac and iPhone sales in five Apple stores last Friday. They calculated:

• Mac sales averaged 13 per hour, up from 2 per hour in early November.
• iPhone sales averaged 3.4 per hour, up from 1.3 per hour in early November. Friday's iPhone sales numbers are "likely understated" because they missed some iPhone gift card sales.