Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A Google search result consisting of a single hit, in response to a search on two words which were not enclosed in quotation marks.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Google +‎ whack. Coined by Gary Storm on 8 January 2002.

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word googlewhack.

Examples

  • EDIT: actually - your worms are probably safe enough: the defining phrase is a googlewhack, indicating the comic probably no longer exists ....

    This made Ian Tregillis spit coffee all over his keyboard akicif 2010

  • Congrats, “soothingly masochistic” was a googlewhack until this post.

    At Lunch Now: Drowning Your Sorrows in Street Meat | Midtown Lunch - Finding Lunch in the Food Wasteland of NYC's Midtown Manhattan 2008

  • You are a googlewhack, with the words tchotchke & visigothic.

    St. Teresa of Avila Argent 2006

  • I came across your blog about a month ago while attempting a googlewhack while bored at work argh!

    things fall apart 2006

  • After I was sent the googlewhack "suberic eschatology", i looked for one of my own. tried "eschatological cork", then 'eschatological cork prozac'.

    March 28th, 2002 2002

  • When I did include a link, for a brief few weeks the only results on the search the words 'googlewhack adventure' were his website and this thing, and for an even briefer time this weblog was actually higher now it's three from the bottom.

    07/20/2003 - 07/27/2003 - "Taking the credit for your second symphony." 2003

  • When I did include a link, for a brief few weeks the only results on the search the words 'googlewhack adventure' were his website and this thing, and for an even briefer time this weblog was actually higher now it's three from the bottom.

    Archive 2003-07-20 2003

  • FrancesSmith 7 February 2012 3:40PM in a way googlewhack, you are right, in an area of reasonably high employment for a healthy young adult with good motivation and a reasonably good cv this strategy would work.

    The Guardian World News John Harris 2012

  • There are a few other rules as well (www. googlewhack.com/rules. htm) and a FAQs page

    unknown title 2009

  • What’s weird is that if you google those words now, you only get one result and it’s not me – a true googlewhack.

    misdirected 2005

Comments

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  • post your whacks or inspired combos! snooker bunlap got 4.

    February 15, 2007

  • It's almost impossible to get a googlewhack that qualifies any more, because of the proliferation of sites which just contain wordlists. about a year ago I had good success with combinations involving one or other of the words syllabub or chupacabra

    February 15, 2007

  • When you type "mepose balkie" into google, it says "Did you mean: jepose balki" When you click on that, it's a googlewhack!

    February 20, 2007

  • AZ: your last post has a faintly surreal quality about it. I think it would be many reincarnations hence before I would be moved to type "mepose balkie" into a google search.

    February 27, 2007

  • re-reading it, it does have a faintly surreal quality. What's weirder is that, when you type "mepose balki" into google, it doesn't always give you the same "Did you mean:"

    I've also discovered that if you post your googlewhacks here, they're googlewhacks no longer.

    March 5, 2007

  • Well, DAMMIT, we can't have nice things!!

    March 5, 2007

  • True, AZ! I've discovered that too. We've become googlisites (subjects of search results found on Google). Go on...try Googling one of your Wordie lists. *sigh*

    March 5, 2007

  • If you post your googlewhacks almost anywhere, you run the risk of compromising their googlewhackery (almost by definition, no?)

    March 6, 2007

  • googlewhackery. Highlight that shit.

    March 6, 2007

  • I first heard this word in an interview with Dave Gorman on the BBC. He traveled the world looking for other googlewhackers and wrote a book about it.

    April 15, 2007

  • That's the Heisenwhack principle at work.

    July 10, 2007

  • Long, long ago a friend found a googlewhack that worked. It no longer does. Interpolation rimjob.

    June 9, 2008

  • Sadly, the very essence of a true googlewhack is its evanescence.

    Sopalali syllabub returns only one hit, but doesn't strictly count because 'sopalali' isn't a google dictionary word.

    June 9, 2008

  • Considering how often Wordie is indexed by Google, it should be easy to create googlewhacks here. Just post as a comment a pair of words that gets no hits in Google. Here's one: "gubernatoric hubris".

    June 10, 2008

  • Dang, Google is fast. I searched for "gubernatoric hubris" 20 minutes ago, and nothing. Now it's a googlewhack.

    Well done, mollusque!

    June 10, 2008

  • Wordie can be seen as a massive, 'key words' clusterfucky nerdgasm.

    June 10, 2008

  • Oops, you mentioned it again, John. Now it gets two g-hits.

    June 11, 2008

  • Geez, whichbe. I never...uh...thought about Wordie that way....

    *mumbling to self*

    June 11, 2008

  • Confelicitous wordies.

    June 12, 2008

  • martingalle clluestick: is a googlewhack if you correctly spell each with only one L (and use + to insist on one word). It shows up on sionnach's Words, coincidentally, as indeed does 'googlewhack'. In fact I was genuinely googling for the combination, having read about CPDOs, a kind of martingalle of financial 'securities' (what quaint terminology they have), which would naturally cause a rational person to reach for the No. 3 Clluestick.

    September 18, 2008

  • Google doesn't seem to index Wordnik very often. A search for "gubernatoric hubris" (see below) finds Wordie but not Wordnik.

    November 14, 2009

  • Mollusque: I have a hunch that within a week or so this will change. All that new data takes time for the google spiders...

    November 15, 2009

  • Now it finds Wordnik too.

    November 15, 2009

  • I love a good Googlewhack.

    February 17, 2012

  • I love Googlewhack's, not a lot around today I don't think. One of my favourites is Anxiousness Scheduler.

    February 17, 2012