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Your LPT webmaster had the following serendipitous e-mail exchange
with SL, a British website-visitor...
SL: Just dropping you a line to inform you that your web site 'Learning
Practical Turkish' is a GoogleWhack with the words 'insatiably' and
'palindromes'. That is, when both words are typed into the Google search engine, your
site is the only one found on the entire Internet.
LPT: That's really super! Many thanks for bringing it to our attention.
I've got to find some way to work that into our website material
somewhere. BTW, how did you come upon the discovery?
SL: I was just passing the time of day
'googlewhacking' with the Google search engine, when I came upon your site at random. Unfortunately
there was no science involved just random coincidence.
LPT:
I was more curious about how you discovered the effect of that
particular word combination. Were you really searching for
a website that contained those two words? Or were you just
experimenting with the Google search engine?
And what's the meaning of the term 'googlewhacking'? Does it just mean
'searching' for websites? Or does it mean something more?
(And, we silently wondered...Could we play similar 'search games' with other search engines, like the Yahoo Search Engine? Was there such a thing as YahooWhacking? We were soon to learn the answer to that question, and many more.)
SL:
No, I was not searching for a web site containing both words -- I was
actively googlewhacking, the term given to the process of imputing two
random words, on the whole completely unrelated, into the search engine
and hoping for a 1 of 1 of 1 result (as seen in the blue strip, a quarter of the way down the page).
The rules of googlewhacking are simple.
1.) Only a 1 of 1 of 1 website counts.
2.) Both words must be underlined (see blue strip). This indicates they
are both in the on-line dictionary.
3.) Word lists do not count.
4.)
Optional: Open the site and using a contact e-mail found within it,
send a message congratulating the site owner on owning a website which
is a googlewhack.
Personally, I found out about this sport (although I hesitate to use the word
due to the small amount of actual physical exertion involved. At the same time I must say that
one's mind and, in turn, one's vocabulary is tested to what I believe is
'Countdown' levels -- so why not!) when a comedian named Dave
Gorman was interviewed by Frank Skinner promoting his book entitled
"Googlewhack" (the story of him travelling the world meeting the
authors/owners of googlewhack sites). Dave's web site is
www.davegorman.com and his book is available now -- and is absolutely
hilarious, well worth owning in a copy... as is his other book
entitled "Are You Dave Gorman" -- a book which tells the adventure story of how he,
Dave Gorman went in search of 54 fellow Dave Gormans from all over the
world. It's another must read, especially as a friend of mine went out with
the daughter of Dave Gorman No. 8!
I hope this makes 'googlewhacking' a little clearer for you now, and I
wish you luck in finding others if the mood takes you.
SL (February '04)
Editor's end note:
We have to admit that we didn't investigate much further after SL contacted us back in 2004. Nonetheless, so far at least, we've found no such similar 'sporting activity' associated with the the other popular internet search facilities like:
Yahoo search engine,
Ask Jeeves search engine,
Dog pile search engine,
Looksmart search engine,
Del.icio.us search engine,
MSN search engine,
Hot Bot search engine,
Alta Vista search engine, or
its notorious 'sound alike' counterpart,
AstalaVista Search Engine...
We wonder...is googlewhacking merely a (fast fading) fad?
Or is it just a matter of time before the other Search Engines join in --
and the term 'GoogleWhack' becomes
a generic Search Engine Optimization byword?
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