Online consumer traffic to retailers has dropped for the first time since records began three years ago, according to a new report.

Internet footfall to internet sellers dropped by 0.5 per cent between October 2007 and October 2008 according to today's monthly retail insight report by Hitwise, a company owned by global information services company Experian.

Director of research at the company Robin Goad said budget retailers were still benefiting from consumers looking for a bargain, with second-hand goods? sales improving and traffic to online classified sellers increasing by 47 per cent.

He continued: "Up until now, online retail has been surviving the economic downturn, but this month’s data proves that the sector is not immune."

According to a report by Experian last week, the five top searches for second-hand goods were cars, books, car prices, furniture and bikes, with Gumtree.com gaining 14.32 per cent market share and its nearest competitor, VivaStreet UK, behind by almost ten per cent with 5.66 per cent of traffic.

More than half of small businesses (53 per cent) believe that the most important benefit of outsourcing is guaranteed response times for IT support. London-based Connect conducted the research in 2007.