Michael Jackson's Death Gets Mobile Search Record and News Hits

Google searchers who weren't near a computer when Michael Jackson died, searched for news on their mobile phones for breaking news. Google experienced one of the largest mobile search spikes ever in its history with 5 of the top 20 searches about the Michael Jackson.

The spike in searches related to Michael Jackson was so big that Google News at first mistook it for an automated attack. Because of the spike for about 25 minutes on Thursday, when some people searched Google News they saw a "We're Sorry" page before finding the articles they were looking for.

Yahoo News set an all-time record with 16.4 million visitors, beating the old record of 15.1 million set last election day. The four million visitors between 3-4 pm PDT set an hourly record. At Yahoo! Music 21,000 people left comments on a blog post about Jackson's life/death.