A Googlewhack is a query consisting of two words (with no quote marks) entered into Google's search page that returns a single result. Googlewhacking is the pastime of finding such a result. A person attempting to find 'Googlewhacks' is known as a Googlewhacker.

The game first appeared on the web as part of Steve White's blog in August of 2002. The first person to coin the term "Google whacking" appears to be Gary Stock. A person finding a googlewhack can log it at googlewhack.com. (Google does not operate this site, although they are aware of it and approve.)

There are a few rules:

1. No quotes in the search term.
2. The words must be in answers.com
3. The found page must be a real article and not a list of words.

A problem/dilemma arises when a person finds a "googlewhack" and subsequently reports it somewhere on the web, as the "googlewhack" will no longer count as a googlewhack as the page where its reported will most likely get "indexed" by google, rendering the googlewhack obsolete.

Some fans of the craze have gone so far as create tools that will automatically find googlewhacks, though some consider use of such the tools unsportsmanlike.

Example: As of March 14, 2003, the search "Hottentot Antigony" produced only one result: [1] (http://www.jamu.cz/setkani/2001/cz/ucastnici.html)

Since 2003, British comedian Dave Gorman has toured Britain, Australia, Canada and the United States with a show entitled Dave Gorman's Googlewhack Adventure, and published a book of the same name. These were based on a true story. While pretending to write a novel for his publisher (Random House) Dave became obsessed with Googlewhacks and traveled across the world finding people who had authored them. Although he never wrote his novel, he did eventually write a book about his Googlewhack Adventure which went on to be a Sunday Times #1 best seller in the UK and has also been published in the U.S. and Canada. A translation is in the works for Japan. [2] (http://www.davegorman.com/googlewhack/index.html)

Variations

More recently the Feedback section of the magazine New Scientist has discussed the idea of a Googlewhackblatt, which is similar to a Googlewhack however it involves finding a single word that produces only one google result. Lists of these have become available, but as with Googlewhacks they result in the Googlewhackblatt status of the word being destroyed - unless the word doesn't produce any Google results before it is added to the list, thus forming the Googlewhackblatt Paradox. Those words that do not produce any Google search results at all are known as Antegooglewhackblatts before they are listed - and subsequently elevated to Googlewhackblatt status.

Feedback stories are also available on the New Scientist website, thus resulting in the destruction of any existing Googlewhackblatts that are ever printed in the magazine. Antegooglewhackblatts that are posted on the Feedback website become known as Feedbackgooglewhackblatts as their Googlewhackblatt status is created.

It is important to note that in contrast to Googlewhacks, many Googlewhackblatts and Antegooglewhackblatts are nonsense words that cannot, and most likely will not ever be found in a dictionary.

External links

• Google.com (http://www.google.com)
• Googlewhack.com (http://www.googlewhack.com)
• proposal for scoring the set-of-words-with-no-hits-on-Google game (http://www.stevewhite.org/log/archive/20010812.htm#20010817-pTangs)
• Another article about Googlewhacks (http://zhurnal.net/ww/zw?MagnetohydrodynamicAphorism)
• Dave Gorman's Googlewhack Adventure (http://www.davegorman.com/googlewhack.htm)
• New Scientist Feedback (http://www.newscientist.com/opinion/opfeedback.jsp)