Typing the words "Tofu Stomp" in a HB annotation recently, I smiled as I imagined someone finding the HB as a result of a Google or other search for the term. But would anyone actually search for "Tofu Stomp"?
Any search engine can list the most popular search terms. I think it would be much more entertaining if each search engine would provide a list of the ten or so most recent search terms that only one person in history has ever entered.
Obvious mis-spellings would have to be culled, I think.-- beauxeault, Aug 15 2001 MetaSpy http://www.metaspy.com/A utility which allows you to see what other people (who are using MetaCrawler) are searching. Kinda fun, I especially like the graphics. [sdm, Aug 15 2001, last modified Oct 04 2004] The Society for the Abolition of One-Hit Wonders http://www.cse.unsw...segames/onehit.html [angel, Aug 15 2001, last modified Oct 04 2004] Search Engine Spies http://searchenginez.com/spy.htmlA catalogue of recent search terms from many engines - most recent queries would easily qualify as un-popular (would stupid be too harsh?) [bast, Mar 20 2002, last modified Oct 04 2004] Googlewhack http://www.googlewhack.com/There can be only one. [bookworm, Mar 20 2002, last modified Oct 04 2004] On the first day of my holidays I always find myself totally bored. I once spent about an hour on Metaspy [link added], where you can see what other people are searching. I think it would be hard to find a least searched item though because there would be so many one-off searches.-- sdm, Aug 15 2001 Tell me again: what would be the point? If metaspy.com is good enough for sdm...-- jabbers, Aug 15 2001 The point is that it would be entertaining, for the same reason that metaspy is entertaining, except that instead of finding one interesting search among a hundred for Britney Spears, all of the Britneys would be filtered out. In fact, weasels, stoats, and badgers would be filtered out, and the bizarreness would be maximized (what is so bizarre that only one person on earth has ever thought to look for it?).
sdm, you'll note that my idea calls for a list of the ten or so *most recent* one-off searches. Also, once a search term appears on the list, many people are going to be inspired to find out what it turned up, so it will quickly rotate off the list.-- beauxeault, Aug 15 2001 OK, previous point cleared up; you get my croissant. But what the @#$! are taxidermy architects? Do they do some strange stuffed or animal buildings? Would their ideas go in the [home] section? And I'm not even up to thinking about benedict wasabi madonnas.-- jabbers, Aug 16 2001 So this is the inverse of googlewhacking?-- bookworm, Mar 20 2002 Or GoogleBlasting -- a game our office devised to pass those slack minutes. A two-player game; players take turns to add one extra word to the Google search box. First to get a unique hits wins; if you get no hits, you forfeit your turn.
Best played with the page sized so you can only see the number of hits, not the results themselves -- the winner's prize is a viewing of the unique result.
Works well on Web and Groups searches, less well on Image searches, and if you want a challenge foreign-language Google Blast is fun.
We didn't find Googlewhack until recently -- memorising a list of Googlewhack terms would provide an advantage...-- JKew, Mar 23 2002 This thing sounds kinda goofy to me. Ever done some statistics, then you'll know that with things like search strings/keywords there are LOTS of infrequently used ones.
On the other hand a 'random pick' database of infrequently found/search-hit websites would be nice.-- Henk Poley, Jan 05 2003 another way of googlewhacking is to post litherly annos so that you can get one result even for the fruitiest searches.-- modular, Jan 19 2004 You make tofu wine too ? Gee, I thought I was the only one....-- normzone, Jan 19 2004 random, halfbakery