claaarky - 2:32 pm on Aug 24, 2012 (gmt 0)

It would be interesting to know what sort of patterns bricks and mortar retailers see. It could be the economy, I certainly know of offline retailers who are really struggling in the recession and they see spurts of activity like we do, and not necessarily on days they would expect either.

Like you, my gut feeling is it's Google as it's been going since before the recession began (but only slightly before). I think the last time I saw steady predictable traffic/sales was in 2007.