Saturday, November 7, 2009

What Happened to Googlewhack.com???

There have been no new googlewhacks posted for some time now. When I tried to post a valid whack, it generated an error saying Google did not link to definitions of both words. It's just a guess, but the problem seems to be that Google no longer links to definitions when more than one search term is used.

Googlewhack.com rules require that both words be... ahem... "valid". Unlike beauty, validity is in the software of the beholder and in the mind of Gary Stock (see older postings for an explanation).

Is Googlewhack.com out of business? Will Gary Stock never get to open that bottle of champagne that will celebrate the 1,000,000th whack? Will I no longer be able to piss my life away looking for googlewhacks? Oh well, I guess there is always snark hunting.

There is a simple solution: change the googlewhack.com software to:

* Submit a query to the Google API and check that [first word] [second word] produces one result.

* Submit a 2nd query on [first word] and see if it links to a definition.

* Submit a 3rd query on [second word] and see if it links to a definition.

This will triple the server load on Google, but how many whacks are submitted to googlewhack.com in a day, maybe 10,000 tops? I think Google can handle it.