Michael Jackson's death caused internet traffic jam

By now, you probably know of the death of pop legend and superstar Michael Jackson at the age of 50, following a heart attack. Well, actually, you may not know that the news pretty much broke the Internet, taking down site after site and service after service.

First to go down was AOL-owned TMZ, which actually broke the news. The site has been experiencing several down-times since the story got out. After TMZ went down, people flocked to Perez Hilton’s highly popular celebrity blog, which couldn't handle the traffic either. As people moved on to the LA Times, which at the time was saying that he was only in a coma, the site also went down. Keynote Systems, a company that tracks website performance, reported that, for the 30 news sites the company monitored, their availability went down an average 14 percent, dropping to 86 percent, and the latency of most websites more than doubled. Sites affected include ABC, AOL, CBS, CNN Money, MSNBC, NBC, SF Chronicle, and Yahoo! News.

Even Google News experienced troubles and a spotty service. “Beginning at 5:30pm (EDT), the average speed for downloading news sites doubled from less than four seconds to almost nine seconds,” Shawn White, Keynote’s director of external operations, said. “During the same period, the average availability of sites on the index dropped from almost 100% to 86%. The index returned to normal by 9:15pm (EDT).” Even IMs weren't safe, as AOL IM went down 40 minutes following the news.

“At AOL our AIM instant messaging service was undergoing a previously scheduled software update which should normally prove routine. It proved not to be. There was a significant increase in traffic due to today’s news and AIM was down for approximately 40 minutes this afternoon,” AOL representatives said in a statement. Meanwhile, with all the talk about real-time searches lately, the Search Engine Journal made a simple test to see which search engine fared better.

Yahoo Search occupied the number-one spot, with all the incorporated news results pointing to news of the pop icon's death. At the time of the test, Google was way behind on the news, with just one headline about the passing of the pop icon. However, Bing wasn't even in the game, as the first instance of the news showed up after more than 20 non-related results.