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


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.