Googlewhacking.

January 24, 2002 10:41 PM

Googlewhacking. A procrastination aid like no other. Find The One -- and score it. I'm getting a little verklempt. Talk amongst yourselves.
posted by pedantic (135 comments total)

So when you post your newly found whack on your blog, Google re-indexes your blog, and then the search brings up 2 hits, the real one and your report... um... does your whack expire?
posted by adamv at 10:53 PM on January 24, 2002

After fifteen minutes, success! smarmy couvade with a score of 53,460,000.

In the scoring link, they address the reindexing issue. If it is a page about Googlewhacking, it doesn't count.
posted by pedantic at 10:57 PM on January 24, 2002

To prevent Google from re-indexing your newly blogged whack, simply include the whack in your root directory's "googlewhack.txt" file. I'm kidding, of course.
posted by johnnyace at 11:17 PM on January 24, 2002

Two words : toboggan porn.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 11:19 PM on January 24, 2002

I don't believe toboggan porn would qualify. It needs to be searched as the words toboggan porn and not the phrase "toboggan porn".
posted by pedantic at 11:44 PM on January 24, 2002

Booya! I remember playing this a few months ago, and I could never come up with a successful one, so I'm happy to report I finally got one: tobaggan death-ray
posted by mathowie at 11:45 PM on January 24, 2002

crap, google counts it as three searched words. I'll keep trying.
posted by mathowie at 11:47 PM on January 24, 2002

this seems to date back to August (scroll down a little). [via leuschke.org]
posted by mattpfeff at 11:49 PM on January 24, 2002

Yep, Matt -- death ray is two words (even in the hit page).

Oh, at it appears that it actually gives two hits. It looks like the same page, accessed from two locations, but I'm not sure we can let that pass :)

Remember to "repeat the search with the omitted results included" (which many are forgetting about)
posted by Lionfire at 11:50 PM on January 24, 2002

pixelized tombstone for 920,000,000
posted by panopticon at 11:54 PM on January 24, 2002

defenestrate googleplex for 3,735,200
posted by thebigpoop at 12:07 AM on January 25, 2002

subdermal bibliophile for 253,275,000
posted by panopticon at 12:17 AM on January 25, 2002

interminable cromulent - 241,500,000

Weblogs are what make this so difficult, at least in the searches I tried.
posted by Nothing at 12:18 AM on January 25, 2002

supercalifragilisticexpialidocious schmuck = 2,200,000,000.
posted by thebigpoop at 12:20 AM on January 25, 2002

troposphere stroganoff = a PDF on the Canadian space program.
posted by twitch at 12:39 AM on January 25, 2002

regassed sex - 6,124,680,000

and

cchange spears - 1,967,680,000

I had a much bigger one in the works, huge, but it fell through due to the irresponsible paradigm mixing of one site. Damn Britney's Guide to Semiconductor Physics!
posted by Nothing at 12:40 AM on January 25, 2002

No! The link there is just a search for sex, sorry! the real one
posted by Nothing at 12:41 AM on January 25, 2002

peeved numismatics for 2,231,460,000
posted by MonkeyMeat at 12:48 AM on January 25, 2002

seismology freakiness for 330,252,000
posted by panopticon at 12:52 AM on January 25, 2002

hyperextended vegans = 627,760,000
posted by tsarfan at 12:58 AM on January 25, 2002

opthamologist cheaters = 2,729,180,000
posted by panopticon at 1:08 AM on January 25, 2002

wow, it looks like you all could whack all night!
posted by eyeballkid at 1:14 AM on January 25, 2002

javax blowjobs = 1,908,400,000,000
posted by youhas at 1:19 AM on January 25, 2002

internationally verisimilitudionous for 2,587,200,000
posted by MonkeyMeat at 1:27 AM on January 25, 2002

heterophilic funk
posted by dejah420 at 1:53 AM on January 25, 2002

bowflex fragmentation for 5,922,000,000
posted by futureproof at 1:56 AM on January 25, 2002

It needs to be searched as the words toboggan porn and not the phrase "toboggan porn".

I know. I was meme-whacking. Or something.

Now I'm just covering for the fact that I'm a big dumbhead.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 1:59 AM on January 25, 2002

I don't think javax blowjobs is legal, as the use of javax on the page is referring to the equivalent of googlewhacking using altavista.
posted by futureproof at 1:59 AM on January 25, 2002

crustacean felching for 1,476,800000
posted by mathowie at 2:01 AM on January 25, 2002

I just noticed that a few of the googlewhacks posted are returning multiple results. Google will sometimes display only one result while omitting similar ones.

I also see that in the last half-hour, another page has been indexed with my googlewhack bowflex fragmentation, what are the chances of that?
posted by futureproof at 2:28 AM on January 25, 2002

miasmic semiologists - 803850
posted by none at 2:39 AM on January 25, 2002

mullet echolocation - 1935700000
posted by none at 2:44 AM on January 25, 2002

myocardial felching for 9,968,400,000
posted by AFrayedKnot at 2:54 AM on January 25, 2002

antithetical disestablishmentarianism. What an awesome timewaster this is. Sand in the gears of the new economy, u betcha.
posted by theplayethic at 3:08 AM on January 25, 2002

ventricular biryani. Erm, that's 4,342,900,000
posted by schoolie at 4:36 AM on January 25, 2002

Dumbest. Game. Ever.
posted by yarf at 4:56 AM on January 25, 2002

Connectionist grandstanding, for 164,000,000.
This is way more fun than something this stupid should be.
posted by PlinAgin at 5:15 AM on January 25, 2002

Okay - how about Pro Google Whacking - hit a page on your own website.
Mine: cheezy neuroanatomy.
'cheezy' might be colloquial but still scores 2,184,050,000.
posted by twitch at 5:15 AM on January 25, 2002

This is worse than Bejeweled. Brings an entirely new and more wholesome meaning to "I just can't stop whacking online!"

dander - gerrymandered
190,071,000

-umberto
posted by umberto at 5:29 AM on January 25, 2002

I've been doing a bit of checking, just on a whim, and it seems that google is too active in its indexing of the web for the scores to have any meaning for long. Already one of mine is gone, one of futureproof's returns two results, and unless the posters above are atrocious at math, the scores have changed by millions of points (youhas's is off by over thirty billion now) since they were posted.
posted by Nothing at 5:36 AM on January 25, 2002

Two misposts in this thread now, sorry. That should have been:

I've been doing a bit of checking, just on a whim, and it seems that google is too active in its indexing of the web for the scores to have any meaning for long. Already one of mine is gone, one of futureproof's returns two results, and unless the posters above are atrocious at math, the scores have changed by millions of points (youhas's is off by over thirty billion now) since they were posted.
posted by Nothing at 5:39 AM on January 25, 2002

Dumbest. Game. Ever.

Actually, I think it's fascinating. If you consider that Google is the definitive card catalog for what surely must be at this point the largest system of information in the world, the implications of this game are amazing. An analogy would be clerks at the Library of Alexander playing a similar game. I feel like Scrooge McDuck swimming in money -- except I'm swimming in information, dammit!

God, I love the 21st century sometimes.

(Gratuitous self-link: I posted on my weblog recently about the ontological value of the Google Image search, and eventually concluded that yes, I am a cute fuzzy bunny. At least, as far as Google is concerned.)
posted by tweebiscuit at 6:30 AM on January 25, 2002

Turnip Hyperwarp. Score of 73,188,000. I've been trying to find something to go with turnip for the last two days. I'm surprised the score isn't higher.
posted by warhol at 6:32 AM on January 25, 2002

splendiferous factorial for 986,850,000.

The problem, of course, is that the original "rules" say the words have to be common. And I agree, weblogs increase the likelihood that any of these unrelated words will appear together on a page. That's why someone can search for "vagina shapes pictures" or "area 51 hooters" or "steve guttenburg photos" and wind up at my weblog, even though you'll find none of those things there.

But still, PlinAgin is right: this is way more fun than something this stupid should be.
posted by UnReality at 6:49 AM on January 25, 2002

My mistake; "splendiferous factorial" actually has no results.
posted by UnReality at 6:52 AM on January 25, 2002

mattpfeff had a good find..."Googlewhacking" back in August.

I like the method of scoring there better. It is easier to remember smaller numbers...less digits and all.
posted by pedantic at 6:57 AM on January 25, 2002

Sublimated halftrack: 140,656,000
posted by darukaru at 7:02 AM on January 25, 2002

Fascinating how? When you're playing a game against a moving target (Google is a dynamic index that changes at least every week, sometimes more often), it's not that fun. Coming up with obscure words and finding that two of them are indexed on a single Web page, this is someone's idea of "fun"??

I can already see the permutations of this game... Do it now for the Images tab! Do it now for the Groups tab!! Wheeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!

A certain phrase about life comes to mind...
posted by yarf at 7:04 AM on January 25, 2002

crepuscular zionist (2,692,800,000)
posted by tucola at 7:09 AM on January 25, 2002

sideswiped zymurgy (81,810,000)
posted by jpoulos at 7:12 AM on January 25, 2002

Subdermal Googleplex. Score: 20,995,200. I'm going for low scores.
posted by warhol at 7:19 AM on January 25, 2002

I think one of the rules for this page at least is that you shouldn't re-use other people's words. be creative!
posted by panopticon at 7:30 AM on January 25, 2002

Miasmic frenulum.
Oh, I'm probably not playing this properly. But even so, it's doing an *excellent* job of keeping my mind off work.
posted by Badmichelle at 7:37 AM on January 25, 2002

Yarf is right.

I'm thinking about other permutations.

What about trying to get the highest number of pages with the two least common words? I'm not sure how to score that though.

While thinking about how to score that, I came up with this scoring mechanism:

(# of results for term one)*(# of results for term two)/(# of results for the two terms together)

This will give you a ratio that bottoms out at 2.

What you would have to find to minimize this score is words that occur together at a high incidence and rarely or never occur apart.
posted by etc. at 7:41 AM on January 25, 2002

pizzicato odiferous

Not a terribly high score, 59,510 if I understand the system right, but still I'm proud of myself for getting one at all.
posted by dnash at 7:54 AM on January 25, 2002

Oh, wait - I only added the hits, not mulitiplied like you're supposed to. So "pizzicato odiferous" is really 227,694,000
posted by dnash at 7:58 AM on January 25, 2002

Sure, panopticon. Change the rules *while* I'm posting. I'm proud of my phrase anyway.
posted by Badmichelle at 8:00 AM on January 25, 2002

Another one of the rules they listed had to do with both words appearing in dictionary.com - Google does the checking for you. In the blue bar below the tabs, it says searched the web for word1 and word2 if the word is underlined, there is a listing on dictionary.com.

Even if you cant' find one, the information/pages you come across can be amazing. And the re-indexing of the pages just adds a mindfuck to it all.
posted by TuxHeDoh at 8:11 AM on January 25, 2002

I'd like to point out that this is also a great way to come up with unclaimed dot-coms.

e.g.:
www.crepuscularzionist.com.
www.miasmicfrenulum.com.

There's a whole new frontier out there!
posted by Tin Man at 8:34 AM on January 25, 2002

callipygian octogenarian 19,380,000
posted by carsonb at 8:35 AM on January 25, 2002

I like the method of scoring there better. It is easier to remember smaller numbers...less digits and all.

Yeah, the pTang is by far a better unit of correlation. The difference between a 15-digit number and a 16-digit one isn't anything like the difference between 6.1 and 14.

It may be a little complicated for some, though.

At least the game finally made it out into the world - we played it for weeks back in the fall. Now where did I put that scorecard?
posted by gleuschk at 8:36 AM on January 25, 2002

humbucker minnow (3,439,800,000)
posted by gimli at 8:36 AM on January 25, 2002

unkindly seismologist for 270,900,000. Boo-yeah!
posted by jacobm at 8:38 AM on January 25, 2002

endodontic badgers - 3,702,200,000 (my friend dwight helped, and he likes badgers) - and it's a Word doc!
posted by panopticon at 8:41 AM on January 25, 2002

reverberating zygomorphic (83,720,000)
posted by 40 Watt at 8:46 AM on January 25, 2002

dayglow enemas - 617,760,000
posted by panopticon at 8:59 AM on January 25, 2002

egomaniac haberdasher (118,455,000)
posted by Tin Man at 9:02 AM on January 25, 2002

spanking hydrofluorocarbons - 17,703,800,000
posted by panopticon at 9:07 AM on January 25, 2002

dayglow enemas

I vote that you should get extra points if you come up with a patentable product or a cool band name.
posted by gimli at 9:33 AM on January 25, 2002

woohoo! zoroastrian bacardi with a score of ummmm.....give me a minute.....2,948,400,000. sweet.
posted by rorycberger at 9:52 AM on January 25, 2002

rheumatoid derailleurs - 8,547,600,000
posted by xiffix at 9:56 AM on January 25, 2002

oooh, and another one: taoist lagavulin. Mixing religion and liquor seems to be a winning combination. And my score is....1,040,040,000
posted by rorycberger at 10:01 AM on January 25, 2002

good score, common words, nice adjective-noun combination:

crumbly ipod - 14,137,200,000.
posted by warhol at 10:07 AM on January 25, 2002

and again: Quran tanqueray = 5,565,000,000. ok, i'll stop now.
posted by rorycberger at 10:13 AM on January 25, 2002

Boo-yah! Uniwhack!

"Flocculent semaphore"

And I think I remember seeing the Day-glo Enemas live some years ago......
posted by BitterOldPunk at 10:13 AM on January 25, 2002

Finally! This result in no way reflects upon me personally:

necropheliac cockatiel
posted by lynda at 10:14 AM on January 25, 2002

wackiest wetware- 258,570,000. Do I get extra points for alliteration?
posted by Fenriss at 10:15 AM on January 25, 2002

Blah. I can spell.
necrophiliac cockatiel
posted by lynda at 10:15 AM on January 25, 2002

Extra points for hitting MeTa?

fuckwit snarkiness - 8,303,200
posted by mr_crash_davis at 10:20 AM on January 25, 2002

"perspicacious mashie" -- 33,552,900

heh heh heh
posted by BitterOldPunk at 10:37 AM on January 25, 2002

hirstute thomism (602,100,000)

goudy solipsist (147,600,000)

gougers pachyderm (83,659,000)
posted by moss at 10:52 AM on January 25, 2002

my first try, kubrick phenylalanine, nets a redonculous score of 30,988,000,000,
though google did list one similar page.
posted by sixfoot6 at 11:04 AM on January 25, 2002

But the similar pages don't include both terms. Man! Does that mean I win, or do proper names not count? The trick seem to be to combine words common to web documents that are in completely unrelated fields, like my science/film combo.
posted by sixfoot6 at 11:11 AM on January 25, 2002

felching scientologist - 5,918,500,000 i had to get a higher score than yesterday
posted by tsarfan at 11:37 AM on January 25, 2002

so many of these would make great band names
posted by tsarfan at 11:38 AM on January 25, 2002

bikini micrometric for 23,115,500,000 - and no similar pages.
posted by beagle at 12:04 PM on January 25, 2002

i'm not sure i've done this right:

stupored theology (354,950,000)

seedy circlejerk (190,035,000)

jambalaya sodomizer (97,188,000) (can u believe there are only 1,560 hits for sodomizer?)
posted by danOstuporStar at 12:12 PM on January 25, 2002

arthritic empanada for 1,154,880,000.
posted by varmint at 12:14 PM on January 25, 2002

scientologist masturbators (11,704,000,000)

thermodynamic nympho (23,320,000,000)

ellipsoid sluts (187,680,000,000)... yeah baby!
posted by blackholebrain at 1:02 PM on January 25, 2002

I hereby declare blackholebrain King of the Googlehackers.
posted by jpoulos at 1:10 PM on January 25, 2002

Might as well go after the big boys:

Condolatory Microsoft - 6,879,600,000

Microsoft peccancy - 4,586,400,000

Enron analingus - 41,125,500,000

Conformable Metafilter - 13,812,800,000 (four similar pages)
posted by mr_crash_davis at 1:14 PM on January 25, 2002

ooh. nice work.
posted by sixfoot6 at 1:21 PM on January 25, 2002

damn this almost as addictive as metafilter, i just had to beat kubrick phenylalanine ... and finally did it with ritualized BBW (49,998,000,000). (does BBW count as a word?)

but damn there is no way i'll find the time to beat blackholebrain.
posted by danOstuporStar at 1:22 PM on January 25, 2002

Whoops, forgot my favorite:

Bisquick pr0n - 730,300,000
posted by mr_crash_davis at 1:29 PM on January 25, 2002

This exercise goes back to 1997 on Altavista. [via The View From Here]
posted by pedantic at 1:38 PM on January 25, 2002

While trying to get work done, the best I've been able to do is meowing lasik (3,237,000,000).

I'm just waiting for someone to find a single word recognized by dictionary.com that appears on only one indexed page. I believe that would score infinity.
posted by etc. at 2:28 PM on January 25, 2002

cunt astrobiologist

6,466,400,000

(sorry, but you can't deny that cuss/sexual words get the most hits. Plus, it was the only one - when paired with astrobiologist - that gave me one result.)
posted by mkn at 3:11 PM on January 25, 2002

stereophonic antidisestablishmentarianism = 158922000
posted by kchristidis at 3:13 PM on January 25, 2002

BTW, I notice Metafilter/talk showing up a LOT. Matt's going to have some really bizarre google search referrers...
posted by mkn at 3:19 PM on January 25, 2002

I got 1,230,040,000 with the best band name ever, tautological croutons.
posted by Shadowkeeper at 3:31 PM on January 25, 2002

swashbuckling alveoli - 1,575,630,000
posted by swift at 3:33 PM on January 25, 2002

indolent daikon - 1,019,230,000

I keep getting under 10 results with all the pages being lists of words, e.g.
posted by mdn at 3:41 PM on January 25, 2002

Sadly, antidisestablishmentarianism isn't on dictionary.com.
posted by etc. at 3:55 PM on January 25, 2002

schwa tablespace scored 2,247,850,000
posted by neilkod at 4:19 PM on January 25, 2002

etc.:

I did find a word that appears only on one site (but three related pages), unfortunately it is not recognized by dictionary.com, but then neither is its root word.

How can we trust a dictionary site that doesn't recognize floccinaucinihilipilificatrices?
posted by mr_crash_davis at 5:22 PM on January 25, 2002

jessamyn boogaloo scored 63,954,000,000

that's my answer and I'm sticking with it, so what if it breaks half the rules? And I've got a secret, there's a sequel, coming soon.
posted by jessamyn at 5:58 PM on January 25, 2002

[that's two too many zeros, whoops]
posted by jessamyn at 6:01 PM on January 25, 2002

For sheer mental imagery, it's hard to beat diarrhetic concubine.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 6:10 PM on January 25, 2002

How about boysenberry triceratops?
posted by grumblebee at 8:53 PM on January 25, 2002

OK, malathion blowjob for 197,079,000,000.

I think I can go to bed now.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 9:58 PM on January 25, 2002

noon paoug for a measly 3,460,016... but also the satisfaction of making it happen right here.

Unfortunately 'paoug' is a Seaconke Wampanoag word. I think that forfeits the entry.
posted by Dane at 10:28 PM on January 25, 2002

I'm working towards ultra-low scores today.

So far, zebrula zedonk yielding 13,516 is my worst best effort.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 3:34 PM on January 26, 2002

Behold the Googlewhacker 74 Zillion, which will instamagically calculate your score for you.
posted by Shadowkeeper at 2:09 PM on January 27, 2002

Can we award extra points if the single result is a Google textad?

I manganged to nail incestuously titanium, but I snagged on an ad in the process. What's the verdict?

(score = 1,840,800,000)
posted by Ptrin at 3:28 PM on January 27, 2002

tetragon sublimation (470,880,000)
posted by Ptrin at 3:32 PM on January 27, 2002

occipital bodacious for 6,123,060,000
posted by Ptrin at 3:52 PM on January 27, 2002

hypergolic fluorite for 161,696,000
posted by Ptrin at 3:57 PM on January 27, 2002

hyrdodynamics sociopath for 2,413,940,000
posted by Ptrin at 4:03 PM on January 27, 2002

pneumatically effeminate for 1,401,570,000
posted by Ptrin at 4:09 PM on January 27, 2002

metastasis snark for 14,720,000,000
posted by Ptrin at 4:29 PM on January 27, 2002

superciliary bragg for 691,540,000
posted by Ptrin at 4:43 PM on January 27, 2002

Flatulent theropod (250,660,000)

Low score, but at least it's gross.

I'm just proud because I nailed a Googlewhack in only one try today.
posted by etc. at 11:36 AM on January 28, 2002

Behold the Googlewhacker 74 Zillion, which will instamagically calculate your score for you.


very nice, but it needs a filter to block results on this and other pages about googlewhacking
posted by rorycberger at 1:55 PM on January 28, 2002

it needs a filter to block results on this and other pages about googlewhacking

done.
posted by Shadowkeeper at 3:14 PM on January 28, 2002

perspicacity derailleur - 556,600,000

psychosomatic tensility - 38,787,200

unicyclist thermodynamic - 1,245,440,000

and thank you for adding that filter shadowkeeper, much appreciated
posted by rorycberger at 10:17 PM on January 29, 2002

yoknapatawpha caddyshack - 193,125,000
posted by rorycberger at 2:33 PM on January 30, 2002

Just heard about Googlewhacking on CNN Headline news. They got it mostly right.
posted by perplexed at 11:57 AM on February 4, 2002

Yahoo News (Reuters): Never Heard of Octopi Jujitsu? Try Googlewhacking
posted by mattpfeff at 5:32 PM on February 4, 2002

tmesis crustacean - 606,000,000
posted by starvingartist at 2:26 PM on February 6, 2002

democratic fragilistic - 877,800,000
posted by aznblader at 3:51 PM on February 6, 2002

tergal blowjob - 12,537,500,000
posted by aznblader at 3:57 PM on February 6, 2002

conchoid porn - 18,270,000,000
posted by Succa at 11:11 PM on February 6, 2002

micrometric porn - 120,640,000,000 ... big up to the University of Waterloo!
posted by Succa at 11:16 PM on February 6, 2002

Bah! Googlewhacking is so 5 minutes ago.

For the freshest of Stupid Google Tricks, I present Google Instant Messaging! (self-link, sorta kinda)
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 3:20 AM on February 7, 2002

Digibeta Vulva comes in at a weak 3,880,800,000.
posted by hellinskira at 6:45 PM on February 7, 2002