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Google saw a 1 million percent increase in searches for “bin laden” during a one-hour period from 10:30 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. ET Sunday evening.
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 Obama made the official announcement that bin Laden had been killed by U.S. forces during a raid on the Abbottabad, Pakistan compound where he was hiding.
“On May 1 between 7:30-8:30 pm PST, we saw a 1 million percent increase in searches for [bin laden],” reads a statement Google posted to Twitter on Tuesday afternoon.
The tweet also included an attached photo, seen below, highlighting the huge spike in “bin laden” search queries Sunday evening.
Google is the latest to release data of its increased activity around news Osama bin Laden’s death. Yahoo revealed Monday that searches for “Osama Bin Laden” spiked 98,550% Sunday evening when compared to Saturday. Akamai also noted a 24% increase in global web traffic, registering 4. 1 million page views to top news sites at 11:30 p.m. ET Sunday.
