I was at my brothers this weekend and made chocolate muffins with my nieces. I went to Google to search for buttercream icing and got the warning on all search engine listings ‘ malware warning: “This site may harm your computer,”.

I initially thought it was the MAC I was using but then decided it had to be Google and perhaps it had been hacked or something. Anyhow, it didn’t last for long and I got the recipe (and the muffins were yummy!).

Anyhow yesterday in the news the headlines were:Google Glitch Briefly Shuts Down Search Engine Saturday

I then wondered what was the impact of this glitch on traffic to websites on Saturday and if this had a real impact on the bottom line for companies. I hear that it was down for 1/2 an hour and the data from the website analytics would reflect this. Looking at the websites that I manage, this downtime in Google must have been for quite a short time – as there is no correlation in a drop in traffic or sales for that day.

The traffic was slightly lower than for other saturdays but who can tell what is an average day anyway in these erratic economic times!