News of Michael Jackson's sudden death last Thursday generated traffic spikes so enormous for Web search engines like Google and Yahoo that, at least in Google's case, they prompted a temporary crash. According to Google -- whose news page was inaccessible for a time on Thursday right as the Jackson news was breaking --
Google at first interpreted the numerous Jackson queries as an attack on its platform.
"The spike in searches related to Michael Jackson was so big that Google News initially mistook it for an automated attack," said R.J. Pittman, director of product management for Google, in a Google blog post. "As a result, for about 25 minutes yesterday, when some people searched Google News they saw a 'We're sorry' page before finding the articles they were looking for."
Both Google and Yahoo -- the No. 1 and No. 2 search engines in North America -- confirmed record-breaking search traffic following to the Jackson news, as well.
Google reported an unprecedented number of mobile searches, with five of its top 20 searches having to do with Michael Jackson. And Yahoo, in a blog post, confirmed that a story on Yahoo.com about Jackson being rushed to the hospital notched 800,000 hits inside of 10 minutes, with another story confirming the pop icon's death reaching 560,000 hits in 10 minutes.
Michael Jackson's passing has also seen security experts working to stem the tidal wave of spam campaigns and malware attacks that have happened in its wake.
