A Bad Day for Search Engines: How News of Michael Jackson's Death Traveled Across the Web
The author's views are entirely their own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz.
Update: Google representatives responded to complaints of the Google News delay with the following explanation:
"The spike in searches related to Michael Jackson was so big that Google News initially mistook it for an automated attack. As a result, for about 25 minutes yesterday, when some people searched Google News they saw a "We're sorry" page before finding the articles they were looking for." - Source
First and foremost, let me extend my best wishes to the family and friends of Michael Jackson. I can only imagine the pain of losing a close friend and then having to watch it play out on a global stage. He made an extraordinary impact on the world and although not perfect, he is a teacher even in death (as evidenced by this post).
The following is a timeline of how the news of the Prince of Pop's death traveled across the internet. Not all the times are exact (they might be off by up to 5 minutes) and not every source is included. All times are GMT.
From an internet marketer's perspective, I found this story fascinating to watch unfold. I was impressed by the speed of information distribution and very surprised to see which site posted the news first. Wikipedia is still the fastest news aggregator. It was faster than Twitter and much faster than Google.
19:21 - One of Michael Jackson's employee's calls 911
The next forty-nine minutes are best described as the calm before the storm. The Los Angles Fire Department arrived at Jackson's rented mansion in Bel Air and family members were alerted of the news.
20:10 - (Story Breaks) A small entertainment site called x17online.com breaks the story.
They post photos and a brief story a full 20 minutes before the much larger entertainment site TMZ.com posts the news. Information goes live on the internet. BOOM!
20:30 - TMZ.com posts "Michael Jackson -- Cardiac Arrest"
TMZ.com posts the story on its homepage and the story is distributed to hundreds of thousands of people via RSS. My guess is they paid a pretty penny for the image above and it paid for itself ten fold with all of the links TMZ got from the story.
21:12 - Wikipedia reports Jackson's Cardiac Arrest
A member of Wikipedia adds the news of the Cardiac Arrest to Jackson's Wikipedia article. This is well before any other news or social media source.
21:20 - TMZ.com posts story of death
Report of Jackson's death starts to show up on RSS feeds and eventually Twitter. It is 11 minutes before the first person clicks on a bit.ly link to TMZ.
21:30 - CNNbrk tweets that Jackson goes to hospital
The official CNN account tweets to its 2 million followers that Jackson went to hospital after suffering from a cardiac arrest
21:31 - First bit.ly link to TMZ story
The first bit.ly link about the story is clicked by someone which leads them to the TMZ article.
21:45 - Wikipedia freezes Michael Jackson page
After an explosion of edits to Jackson's Wikipedia article, editors take the step of locking it down in protective status.
21:46 - Wikipedia article discussion has first reports of Jackson's death (Note: Event updated 6/27/09 due to new information)
Wikipedia editors first mention Jackson's death on the article discussion page.
21:50 - bit.ly link reaches high of 2,500 clicks a minute
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Bit.ly link to TMZ hits high of almost 42 clicks a second.
22:03 - TMZ story on Jackson's death is submitted to Digg
A bit late to the game, the story that would eventually go on to be one of the most dugg stories ever is first submitted to the site.
22:11 - TMZ story goes popular on Digg
The story is moved to the front page of Digg where its distribution erupts.
22:19 - "RIP Michael Jackson" tops Trends on Twitter
Story takes the next step and appears on Twitter's Trends. Tens of millions of Twitter users now can see the story.
22:20 - MSNBC.com Confirms Jackson's Death
One hour after the news of Jackson's death hits the internet, the first mainstream news source publishes a confirmation article.
22:25 - CNN.com Confirms Jackson's Death
CNN, out maneuvered by TMZ and MSNBC, confirms Jackson's death.
22:27 - Wikipedia first reports Jackson's death
Wikipedia editors get enough evidence to post Jackson's death.
22:34 - Approximately 2000 mentions a minute of Michael Jackson on Twitter
Mentions of Michael Jackson hit an all time high on Twitter with nearly 1,500 a minute. That's almost 20% of all tweets at that time!
22:38 - Twitter starts to overload. First signs of the fail whale
Twitter starts to falter as a result of the massive spike.
22:40 - First stories of Jackson's death make it on Google News
1 hour and 20 minutes after the story is first posted on TMZ, Google News starts to report the story.
22:46 - Google News Results of Jackson's death start showing up on the results page for the query "Michael Jackson"
Google News results top the Google results page for "Michael Jackson".
22:58 - Googlebot crawls CNN twitter feed
Google starts returning CNN's twitter feed in "Michael Jackson" SERP and provides link to cached version.
23:00 - "Michael Jackson Died" shows up in Google Trends
Google trends updates and show's "Michael Jackson Died" as hottest trending item.
23:18 - 4chan.org goes down
4chan members temporarily overload servers. I mention this mostly because I find it really funny. ;-p
23:47 - "Michael Jackson Heart Attack" and "Michael Jackson Cardiac Arrest" show up as suggested search on Google Homepage for "Michael Jackson"
Indirect news of Jackson's death (if someone types "Michael Jackson") shows up on Google's homepage.
My Take Away:
Google has a really big problem and SEOs need to pay attention.
(Note: I choose Google rather than the other search engines because it leads them in all of the aspects I mention below. Everything I say about Google applies even more to the other search engines. I only have a basic idea of how difficult the technology problems are with the issues below. For better or for worse, I hold Google to a higher standard and I am not afraid to expect more.)
First, a little background information. I believe it was Ben Hendrickson who first mentioned to me the existence of three separate time priorities when indexing the web. He pointed out that the current version of Linkscape crawls and analyzes the slow moving web with a delay of about 4 weeks. (This is damn impressive given an index size of 54+ billion pages.) Blogscape (PRO Only) is much faster and aggregates the fast moving blogosphere of millions of feeds with less than 6 hours of delay. While impressive, we are still trying to catch up with Google and have started to run into the same wall as them. Sites like Twitter, have created a new real-time web. It is only in the order of perhaps hundreds of thousands of pages but indexing it is almost useless with a delay of more than a few seconds.
The events of Thursday demonstrated that Google is falling behind in the emerging real-time web. It was 3 hours and 17 minutes after TMZ first announced Michael Jackson had experienced cardiac arrest before it appeared as a auto completion suggestion on Google's homepage. In the computer age that is a huge amount of time. It is 3 hours and 17 minutes during which consumers may choose to go somewhere other than Google to get the information they want.
As SEOs, we largely rely on the success of Google for our incomes. These are the same incomes that put food on the table for our families. It is easy to think that Google's technology is flawless, after all, it really is incredible. However, it is experiences like the events of Thursday that reveal how truly vulnerable the search engines are.
For me it was humbling,
Teaser: SEOmoz does have a plan for the real-time web and we are excitedly working on it. More information to come in the future. :-)
"The spike in searches related to Michael Jackson was so big that Google News initially mistook it for an automated attack. As a result, for about 25 minutes yesterday, when some people searched Google News they saw a "We're sorry" page before finding the articles they were looking for." - Source
First and foremost, let me extend my best wishes to the family and friends of Michael Jackson. I can only imagine the pain of losing a close friend and then having to watch it play out on a global stage. He made an extraordinary impact on the world and although not perfect, he is a teacher even in death (as evidenced by this post).
The following is a timeline of how the news of the Prince of Pop's death traveled across the internet. Not all the times are exact (they might be off by up to 5 minutes) and not every source is included. All times are GMT.
From an internet marketer's perspective, I found this story fascinating to watch unfold. I was impressed by the speed of information distribution and very surprised to see which site posted the news first. Wikipedia is still the fastest news aggregator. It was faster than Twitter and much faster than Google.
A Timeline of How News of Michael Jackson's Death Traveled Across the Internet
19:21 - One of Michael Jackson's employee's calls 911
The next forty-nine minutes are best described as the calm before the storm. The Los Angles Fire Department arrived at Jackson's rented mansion in Bel Air and family members were alerted of the news.
20:10 - (Story Breaks) A small entertainment site called x17online.com breaks the story.
They post photos and a brief story a full 20 minutes before the much larger entertainment site TMZ.com posts the news. Information goes live on the internet. BOOM!
20:30 - TMZ.com posts "Michael Jackson -- Cardiac Arrest"
TMZ.com posts the story on its homepage and the story is distributed to hundreds of thousands of people via RSS. My guess is they paid a pretty penny for the image above and it paid for itself ten fold with all of the links TMZ got from the story.
21:12 - Wikipedia reports Jackson's Cardiac Arrest
A member of Wikipedia adds the news of the Cardiac Arrest to Jackson's Wikipedia article. This is well before any other news or social media source.
21:20 - TMZ.com posts story of death
Report of Jackson's death starts to show up on RSS feeds and eventually Twitter. It is 11 minutes before the first person clicks on a bit.ly link to TMZ.
21:30 - CNNbrk tweets that Jackson goes to hospital
The official CNN account tweets to its 2 million followers that Jackson went to hospital after suffering from a cardiac arrest
21:31 - First bit.ly link to TMZ story
The first bit.ly link about the story is clicked by someone which leads them to the TMZ article.
21:45 - Wikipedia freezes Michael Jackson page
After an explosion of edits to Jackson's Wikipedia article, editors take the step of locking it down in protective status.
21:46 - Wikipedia article discussion has first reports of Jackson's death (Note: Event updated 6/27/09 due to new information)
Wikipedia editors first mention Jackson's death on the article discussion page.
21:50 - bit.ly link reaches high of 2,500 clicks a minute
Bit.ly link to TMZ hits high of almost 42 clicks a second.
22:03 - TMZ story on Jackson's death is submitted to Digg
A bit late to the game, the story that would eventually go on to be one of the most dugg stories ever is first submitted to the site.
22:11 - TMZ story goes popular on Digg
The story is moved to the front page of Digg where its distribution erupts.
22:19 - "RIP Michael Jackson" tops Trends on Twitter
Story takes the next step and appears on Twitter's Trends. Tens of millions of Twitter users now can see the story.
22:20 - MSNBC.com Confirms Jackson's Death
One hour after the news of Jackson's death hits the internet, the first mainstream news source publishes a confirmation article.
22:25 - CNN.com Confirms Jackson's Death
CNN, out maneuvered by TMZ and MSNBC, confirms Jackson's death.
22:27 - Wikipedia first reports Jackson's death
Wikipedia editors get enough evidence to post Jackson's death.
22:34 - Approximately 2000 mentions a minute of Michael Jackson on Twitter
Mentions of Michael Jackson hit an all time high on Twitter with nearly 1,500 a minute. That's almost 20% of all tweets at that time!
22:38 - Twitter starts to overload. First signs of the fail whale
Twitter starts to falter as a result of the massive spike.
22:40 - First stories of Jackson's death make it on Google News
1 hour and 20 minutes after the story is first posted on TMZ, Google News starts to report the story.
22:46 - Google News Results of Jackson's death start showing up on the results page for the query "Michael Jackson"
Google News results top the Google results page for "Michael Jackson".
22:58 - Googlebot crawls CNN twitter feed
Google starts returning CNN's twitter feed in "Michael Jackson" SERP and provides link to cached version.
23:00 - "Michael Jackson Died" shows up in Google Trends
Google trends updates and show's "Michael Jackson Died" as hottest trending item.
23:18 - 4chan.org goes down
4chan members temporarily overload servers. I mention this mostly because I find it really funny. ;-p
23:47 - "Michael Jackson Heart Attack" and "Michael Jackson Cardiac Arrest" show up as suggested search on Google Homepage for "Michael Jackson"
Indirect news of Jackson's death (if someone types "Michael Jackson") shows up on Google's homepage.
My Take Away:
Google has a really big problem and SEOs need to pay attention.
(Note: I choose Google rather than the other search engines because it leads them in all of the aspects I mention below. Everything I say about Google applies even more to the other search engines. I only have a basic idea of how difficult the technology problems are with the issues below. For better or for worse, I hold Google to a higher standard and I am not afraid to expect more.)
First, a little background information. I believe it was Ben Hendrickson who first mentioned to me the existence of three separate time priorities when indexing the web. He pointed out that the current version of Linkscape crawls and analyzes the slow moving web with a delay of about 4 weeks. (This is damn impressive given an index size of 54+ billion pages.) Blogscape (PRO Only) is much faster and aggregates the fast moving blogosphere of millions of feeds with less than 6 hours of delay. While impressive, we are still trying to catch up with Google and have started to run into the same wall as them. Sites like Twitter, have created a new real-time web. It is only in the order of perhaps hundreds of thousands of pages but indexing it is almost useless with a delay of more than a few seconds.
The events of Thursday demonstrated that Google is falling behind in the emerging real-time web. It was 3 hours and 17 minutes after TMZ first announced Michael Jackson had experienced cardiac arrest before it appeared as a auto completion suggestion on Google's homepage. In the computer age that is a huge amount of time. It is 3 hours and 17 minutes during which consumers may choose to go somewhere other than Google to get the information they want.
As SEOs, we largely rely on the success of Google for our incomes. These are the same incomes that put food on the table for our families. It is easy to think that Google's technology is flawless, after all, it really is incredible. However, it is experiences like the events of Thursday that reveal how truly vulnerable the search engines are.
For me it was humbling,
Teaser: SEOmoz does have a plan for the real-time web and we are excitedly working on it. More information to come in the future. :-)
If you have any other story sources that you think are worth sharing, feel free to post them in the comments. This post is very much a work in progress. As always, feel free to e-mail me or send me a private message if you have any suggestions on how I can make my posts more useful. All of my contact information is available on my profile: Danny Thanks!
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