The day that Michael Jackson punked Google

As the news hit the web that Michael Jackson had died there was such a spike in traffic right across the web that Google thought there was an attack taking place against its service. Even here at The Inquisitr we experienced load problems as our team quickly tried to keep our readers abreast of what was happening.

However cnet News has confirmed that Goggle did indeed think it was being attacked

Google has confirmed that the surge of Michael Jackson-related searches on Google News Thursday was first interpreted as an attack on its service.

Google News was inaccessible for some people Thursday afternoon right as rumors of Jackson’s death began to circulate, replaced by an error message reading “We’re sorry, but your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application. To protect our users, we can’t process your request right now.”

Of course, those queries were quite legitimate, as millions around the world searched for accurate information regarding Jackson following reports that he had suffered cardiac arrest. The spike in queries began at about 2:45 p.m. PDT Thursday, and Google thought the traffic was an attack for about 25 minutes before realizing what was going on

Source: cnet News :: Google thought Michael Jackson traffic was attack

And from the graph it looks like that even though traffic has quieted down somewhat it still is above the traffic before his death.