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
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
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
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
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
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!"
-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
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
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
I think one of the rules for this page at least is that you shouldn't re-useotherpeople'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
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.
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
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
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:
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
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
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
(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
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 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.
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
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posted by adamv at 10:53 PM on January 24, 2002