Games to play using the Google search engine. I’ve blogged about Googlewacks previously, see the end of this list. On to the games:

While tens of millions of people like Google, a disconcertingly large minority are obsessed with it. Since 1999, techies have invested many hours and much creativity into devising a wide range of Google-based parlor games and curiosities. Here’s a sampling, courtesy of Google and Cameron Marlow at MIT’s Media Lab.

Googlewhack Find two words which, when combined in a Google query, deliver one and only one result. www.googlewhack.com claims that it has recorded 120,000 whacks since January 2002. Among recent entries to its “Whack Stack” are prevarication pileups and hiccupping flubber. (A Fast Company original: defamatory meerkats.)

Googlebomb Geek terrorism. Taking advantage of a Google loophole, Googlebombers gang up to mass-hyperlink a target page with a specific (usually derogatory) phrase. Google picks up on the links, even if the phrase isn’t on the page itself. The legendary first, incited by Adam Mathes in April 2001, tagged Mathes’s friend Andy Pressman’s site with the words “talentless hack.” For a while, it stuck.

Googleshare The invention of blogger Steven Berlin Johnson. Search Google for one word. Then search those results for the name of a person. Divide the number of results delivered for your second search by those from the first to get that person’s “semantic mindshare” of the word.

Googlism Type in your name, someone else’s name, or a date, place, or thing at www.googlism.com. The application, written by a team at Domain Active in Australia, uses Google to deliver Web-based definitions of your phrase. Bill Gates, for example, is “the anti-Christ,” “a thief,” “a hero,” and “a wanker.”

Google Smackdown Two queries. One search engine. A “terabyte tug-of-war,” as its creator, Paul Bausch, calls it. Just plug in two competing words or phrases at www.onfocus.com/googlesmack/down.asp, and see which delivers more Google results. (Google, with 17.5 million, suffers a rare embarrassment at the hands of God, with 42.6 million.)

So there’s my two googlewhacks. Try it, not as easy as you think – the rules can be found over at www.davegorman.com or the original site over at www.googlewhack.com/

Edit: I added my crumbed espadrille to the googlewhack site, as my other whack was a flop I thought I’d find another. Chaetotaxy triumvirate is the result. I was on a roll then, now I wanted a comedy googlewhack, not one of your common ones. Oh no. Now I was cocky. So exfoliating mongooses became a googlewhack.

Huzzah, three whacks.

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