“SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — The Web site of leading retailer Wal-Mart Stores Inc. was offline or otherwise “unusable” for much of Friday, which is the busiest shopping day of the year, according to an Internet performance-tracking company.

Those that managed to gain access to the site had to wait up to 30 seconds for search results and even longer to complete a purchase, according to Ben Rushlo, a senior director at Keynote Systems, which monitors Web-site performance.

A message on the company’s site blamed the problems on “high traffic volume.”

Not expecting hight traffic volume on Black Friday?  Give me a break … this is pathetic.

Update (11/26):  News.com’s report just hit Techmeme.