Many websites slowed down as the news of Michael Jackson’s death broke.

Internet search engine Google slowed down between 2.40pm and 3.15pm Pacific time on 25 June (9.40 pm and 10.15pm GMT) yesterday as the news of Michael Jackson’s death broke.

Reports have indicated that online users had trouble accessing a number of news websites as they rushed to get information on the pop star’s sudden death.

Millions of people “Googling” the star’s name were greeted with an error page rather than a list of results – warning users that “your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application”.

Many blogs and industry sites suggested that there were problems accessing TMZ, Google News and the popular micro-blogging site Twitter, which pushed out its infamous “Fail Whale” to indicate when the site wasn’t accessible.

TMZ.com, a popular celebrity gossip web site, broke the story that Jackson had suffered a cardiac arrest after a tip-off that paramedics had visited the singer’s home.

Twitter.com crashed at least once and ran very slowly for some time – it recorded over 50,000 tweets about Michael Jackson’s death in just one hour – and this morning, Michael Jackson is ranked on seven of the top ten trending topics.

Google spokesman Gabriel Stricker, told BBC News online: “It’s true that between approximately 2.40pm Pacific and 3.15pm Pacific, some Google News users experienced difficulty accessing search results for queries related to Michael Jackson and saw the error page.”

It was around this time that the singer was officially pronounced dead – 10.26pm GMT.