iZone International: 1 mn pc hike in searches for ‘Bin Laden’
Proving that the Internet is a trusted source for news and information today, Google reported a 1 million per cent increase in searches for “bin Laden”, a surge which took place roughly one hour before the announcement of his killing.
“On May 1 between 7:30-8:30 pm PST, we saw a 1 million per cent increase in searches for [bin Laden].” This was a statement posted on Google’s Facebook page earlier on May 4, 2011, showing the sudden surge in queries on Osama bin Laden, as news broke of the terrorist leader’s death at the hands of American special forces.
The peak search traffic began roughly as news of Osama bin Laden’s death started to spread on Twitter, and roughly one hour before President Barack Obama
officially announced that bin Laden had been killed by the US forces.
Yahoo also revealed that searches for “Osama Bin Laden” went up by 98,550 per cent on Sunday as compared to Saturday. Jack Bauer, the fictional hero of the television show ‘24’ also became a trending topic on Twitter soon after the news broke, while both Yahoo and Google also released information that searches for President Obama coming second only to Osama, suggesting that the public interest in the US President is higher than it has been in quite some time.
