Google Confirms Chicago Earthquake

We felt aftershocks in the office at around 10:15 this morning. The search term “chicago earthquake” is “spicy hot” right now according to Google Trends. Search activity peaked about 6 hours ago … what’s interesting (and note that the timescale is P.S.T. and we are in C.S.T.) is that search activity picks up immediately after the earthquake occurred. I experienced an earthquake in 1988 while living in upstate NY and we had to wait an hour, glued to the radio, to learn whether or not I was hallucinating. I’m not sure how quickly official news of the quake was posted, but many turned to Google for information as soon as the event occurred.

Surfing around I found this great USGS user contributed data earthquake experience map. If you felt the quake post your experience.