[WikiEN-l] Internet traffic spikes due to Michael Jackson's death

[Carcharoth]

On Fri, Jun 26, 2009 at 8:52 PM, Charles
Matthews<charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> Hmm ... Google "Michael Jackson" and "Wikipedia". Top two hits are enWP
> pages - no surprise.  The third hit is [[af:Michael Jackson]] - yes, the
> Afrikaans Wikipedia page.  One sentence and more interwikis than you can
> shake a memory stick at.  Google ... what were you thinking of?

Strange. I did a search for:

wikipedia + michael + jackson

Third hit (or second if you discount indented results) was
[[li:Michael Jackson]] - Limburgian!

Put quotes around "michael jackson" - same result: third hit (or
second if you discount indented results).

Switch order of search:

"michael jackson" + wikipedia

Now the Afrikaans article is where the Limburgian article was. With
the Limburgian article in fifth place.

But the results are in flux even as I search.

Maybe we need two new categories:

[[:Category:People whose death disrupts the internet]]
[[:Category:People whose death disrupts Google]]

Presumably it is because millions of people are following links and
messing things up for Google. Though that might actually be a feature,
not a bug. If these other Wikipedia articles are popular, that affects
the Google results, doesn't it? [Forgive me if that completely
misunderstands how Google works.]

Of course, most people search for michael + jackson, and get the news
results, the official site, and the Wikipedia article, so things are
really working OK (if you agree that Wikipedia articles should be so
high up the search results - something I'm not always sure about). I
mean, does anyone apart from those looking for the Wikipedia article
put "Wikipedia" in the search box?

Carcharoth