comScore just released figures on eretail sales recovery over the past weeks since September 11th. I'd love to give you a link to it because there are some fascinating numbers, but they haven't gotten around to posting the release at their site yet, and it wasn't picked up on Yahoo either. (A good argument for making sure your PR dept has an easy-to-use content management system for your site.)

Some basic factoids from the report which studied 1.5 million Internet users:

-"Essential" products, such as apparel, health and beauty sales rebounded more quickly online than "nonessential" products such as books which only made it up to pre-event levels as of this week. (Ok I beg to differ over what's essential and what's not.)

- Travel which in "normal" times represents $411 millions in sales per week, is still 17% below projections. Interestingly, it actually rebounded to just 11% below average two weeks ago, and now is dipping again. Do you think it's anthrax related? Anyway the pre-Thanksgiving bump has yet to show.

- Non-travel items, which in "normal" times represents $589 millions in sales per week according to comScore, has leveled off to $588 millions, representing no change. However, the total these eretailers should have made from Sept 10-Oct 14 was $2,945 millions... but due to the attacks, they only made $2,660 millions representing a loss of $285 millions, or about 3-4 days total business.

That last number makes me realize how much we stand to lose if the rumors now circulating the Web on news sites such as Media Life Magazine that a massive hacker attack, that could pull the Web down for a period of time, is imminent. On a lighter note, I also wonder how many sales will be lost as people email each other about rumors of a possible hacker attack, instead of shopping as they should be.