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Google Mistakes Michael Jackson’s Death for an “Automated Attack”

by Peter Kafka
Posted on June 26, 2009 at 5:48 PM PT

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One last Michael Jackson Web traffic story: Google says it received so many search queries with the late singer’s name on Thursday that it thought it was being targeted by an “automated attack.” Which meant that some visitors looking for Jackson info on Google News got an error message for about 25 minutes yesterday.

Google also offers up this graph, below (click to enlarge), to give you a sense of the traffic spike it got from Jackson-searchers. It’s impressive, but without metrics it’s sort of hard to gauge what it really means–just like the chart that Google (GOOG) provided about query volume during Barack Obama’s inauguration.

michael-jackson-searches

Print Post to Twitter Comments Tagged: Google, Internet, Peter Kafka, blogs, digital, media, search, , , , , , , , , , , , | permalink
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  • Joanna Pena-Bickley
    MJ even trumped the election participation. I wonder what that says about our society? Last night the mediums and the messages converged and exploded.

    What I know for sure is that People + TV + Mobile + Digital x #michaeljackson = instant phenomena.

    ON: The Michael Jackson Effect - http://joannapenabickley.typepad.com/on/2009/06...
  • Is that true. Unbelievable.
  • What this says about our society is that people are so thoroughly pacified/distracted by entertainment and petty gossip that not even the most important presidential election in their lifetimes got their full attention by comparison. That's sad and scary, and you can bet that the producers and perpetrators of this non-stop entertainment overload are counting on this very result.
  • Joanna - the election was most concerned by Americans. But MJJ spike was queried more by the world. So the differences are easy to note. Especially from websites, so you have to be keen as to where the spikes are from, not just the US. CBS news is know quite well in other parts of the world, as well as ABC/NBC/CNN/FOX -other countries know our news sources too.
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About Peter

Peter Kafka has been covering media and technology since 1997, when he joined the staff of Forbes magazine. Most recently, he has been the managing editor of the tech and media Web site, Silicon Alley Insider. Read more »

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