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by  June 27, 2009 Comments

Google – Spike In Michael Jackson Traffic Thought To Be An Attack

As millions of users went to the Internet to find out more information about Michael Jackson, Google had a major spike in traffic, which at first appeared to be an attack. The search giant stated that Google News was unavailable to some users during this time.

A warning flashed to some user which stated:

“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.”

Yahoo also thought they were under attack as well. In fact Yahoo reported that the search for information on Michael Jackson was the highest visited story in their history. No word about Bing.

Comments welcome.

Source.

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My career has included owning and operating my own computer repair business as well as teaching at the local community college -- both of which were located in Tuolumne County, California. During this time I was fortunate to have contracts with the city of Sonora and several established real estate firms.

I have been writing for LockerGnome since relocating to Missouri six years ago, where I continue to be a technology enthusiast who enjoys playing with the newest and latest gadgets.

Comments

  1. Ryan Farmer says:
    June 27, 2009 at 5:52 am

    With tens of dozens of users in the wake of Michael Jackson’s death, Microsoft thought the Bing ads were finally paying off?

  2. Ron Schenone says:
    June 27, 2009 at 6:10 am

    Heh Ryan – now that is funny! LOL

  3. Ryan Farmer says:
    June 27, 2009 at 7:12 am

    The funniest part about their latest ad, “Search overload”, in which people get page after page of meaningless random crap more accurately describes Bing than any other search engine I’ve seen. (With the possible exception of Live)

    By the way, did you see what IE 8 does to your blog?

    http://img39.imageshack.us/img39/7237/39922794.png

    IE 8 is not only not standards compliant, but isn’t even compliant with the non-standard crap supported in previous versions which Firefox handles quite well. :P

  4. Ron Schenone says:
    June 27, 2009 at 12:11 pm

    Hi Ryan,
    I am aware of it. MS is going to loose more share since it is not only my site that doesn’t render correctly.

  5. Google – Spike In Michael Jackson Traffic Thought To Be An Attack … | Michael Jackson Is Dead at 50 says:
    June 27, 2009 at 10:55 pm

    [...] is the original: Google – Spike In Michael Jackson Traffic Thought To Be An Attack … No TweetBacks yet. (Be the first to Tweet this post) Share and [...]

  6. Buffet says:
    June 28, 2009 at 12:58 am

    At least we now know where the idea for that face came from! (scroll to sphinx photo) /item_96731.asphttp://www.oddee.comx

  7. Buffet says:
    June 28, 2009 at 12:58 am

    /item_96731.asphttp://www.oddee.comx

  8. How the death of Michael Jackson took down parts of the web says:
    June 30, 2009 at 7:38 am

    [...] the number of status updates in the hour after the MJ news emerged according the the LA Times. One source reports that both Google and Yahoo! both initially thought they were experiencing a cyber attack! [...]