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    Google Saw One Million Percent Increase In Searches For 'Bin Laden' On May 1

    Leena Rao

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    Leena Rao is currently a Senior Editor for TechCrunch. She recently finished graduate school at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, where she studied business journalism and videography. From 2004 to 2007, she helped lead Congresswoman Carloyn Maloney’s community outreach and relations efforts in New York City. She graduated from Columbia University in 2003, where she was... → Learn More

    Tuesday, May 3rd, 2011
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    We heard yesterday that Sunday night’s announcement of Osama Bin Laden’s death drew the highest sustained rate of tweets ever according to Twitter and Google has revealed an impressive stat showing the impact of the event on Google search.

    Google says that between 7:30 and 8:30 pm PST (which was right around the time the news broke over Twitter), Google saw an one million percent increase in searches for the term ‘bin laden.’

    For basis of comparison, you can see a chart below comparing searches for the Royal Wedding on Google Trends. The Royal Wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton also drew massive amounts of web traffic from around the world, but clearly the search volume for news and information around Bin Laden’s death came in at a much higher scale.

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