Search of the Week: Michael Jackson

This week's breakout search was the death of Michael Jackson, which shocked fans worldwide into a searching frenzy. Let's see how this search breaks down at Google Insights.

• Regionally, the country that searched the most for news of Michael Jackson was Jamaica, then New Zealand, then Canada and the United States.
• Cities that had the most searches for Michael Jackson were Waterloo, Canada; Los Angeles, California; and San Francisco, California.
• Searches related to Michael Jackson were jackson is dead, is michael jackson, michael is dead, news michael jackson, and micheal jackson dead.
• Rising searches related to Michael Jackson (these are searches that are currently being measured) are news michael jackson, michael jackson death, michael jackson 2009, and jackson is dead.

Now, this was just Google's measurements of this week's search volume. Let's look at a few other sites and search tools to get a bigger picture.

According to Topsy, a search engine that focuses on Twitter data, Michael Jackson conversations reached an all-time high of nearly 160,000 tweets. These conversations were most focuses around the following links/stories:

• Michael Jackson Dies | TMZ.com
• Michael Jackson dead at 50 after cardiac arrest - CNN.com
• Michael Jackson is dead [Updated] | L.A. Now | Los Angeles Times

According to BlogPulse, a blogosphere measurement and analysis tool, many conversations on the Web circled around Michael Jackson's music and videos, especially YouTube - Michael Jackson - Thriller, YouTube - Michael Jackson - Billie Jean, and YouTube - Michael Jackson - Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough. The news stories that attracted the most links were Michael Jackson dead at 50 after cardiac arrest - CNN.com and Michael Jackson, pop music legend, dead at 50 - CNN.com. Key phrases and themes showing up in today's blog entries are michael jackson autopsy, smooth criminal, rented home in holmby hills, neverland ranch, and quincy jones.

Technorati, a great resource for researching trending topics, points to these stories as the ones that the most people are talking about and linking to today:

• Michael Jackson dead at 50 after cardiac arrest - cnn.com
• Singer Michael Jackson dies at 50 - news.bbc.co.uk
• Tape of 911 Call Released as Jackson Autopsy Under Way - foxnews.com

A few more tidbits for you....Ask.com has 11,477 questions about michael jackson. Michael Jackson topped Bing's searches for the week, as did thriller, demerol, and tmz. Yahoo Answers had over 8000 questions, both answered and unanswered, in the last seven days about Michael Jackson. Suffice it to say that this was an extremely hot topic this week, and shows no sign of slowing down anytime soon.

Tim Whitby / Getty Images