Is Google Trends Down Because of Tiger Woods?

Code Red.

Google Trends, the site operated by Google that shows what people are searching for, and how popular those searches are, is down. Let me repeat that: Google Trends is down. As of this writing, the site hasn't been updated for 11 hours.

Call me crazy. Call me a conspiracy theory-loving nut.

But what if Tiger Woods shut down Google Trends?

I'm not trying to imply Woods' attorneys, or his representatives, or the people behind the many products Woods endorses had anything to do with this. But over the past four days, pretty much every combination of "Tiger Woods" "Scandal" Mistress" and "Car Accident" has flooded the top 40 searches across the Web, according to Google Trends. Plus, alleged mistresses Rachel Uchitel, Jaimee Grubbs, and Kalika Moquin have been the subjects of many, many searches (including people looking for images of all three women). And don't forget Elin Nordegren, Tiger's twin sister, or Jepser Parnevik, the golfer with the harshest words for Tiger thus far.

The car accident, the speculation, the women, the mystery, the "transgressions."

With Tiger Woods dominating the Web unlike anything we've ever seen before, the searches have become the story. The blogosphere, newspapers, gossip sites, you name it: they're all talking about the incredible breadth and depth of the web searches that all tie back to one guy.

It's one thing for people to search for all of this. It's another to see just how dominant one man has been over the internet for the past four to five days. So maybe Google Trends decided to cool things off for a bit, and not become the story. Or maybe this is all a coincidence.

One thing I do know, is that "Google Trends Down" is probably pretty close to becoming a Top 40 search trend.