Google For Dummies

The Random Googlelaar

In the previous section on Googlewhacking, I mentioned that using automated, random-word search generators was cheating. Googlelaar, which generates one-word, two-word, and three-word searches in English or Dutch, provides perfect examples of why these things don't yield legitimate whacks. Here's the home page:

www.northernlake.com/googlelaar/

When I first encountered Googlelaar, I got a whack in my first random search: pained pentanone. I've shown the search results in Figure 15-2, for the fun of seeing a Googlewhack, albeit an illegitimate one. Cheating or not, it's amazing to see that '1 of 1' in the summary bar.

Figure 15-2: A Googlewhack! Except it's not legitimate. This search results was generated through a Googlelaar random search.

Googlelaar, and other random-word Google interfaces, are frivolous to the extreme. But there's something trivially satisfying about making Google chase its tail. Figure 15-3 shows Googlelaar's page - it's simple enough to use. Click the drop-down menus to select the number of words and language, and then click the Hit me! button. Google delivers the search results. Click the Back button to try another search.

Figure 15-3: Googlelaar provides the keywords; you just choose how many and which language, English or Dutch.

Googlelaar prowls through the Webster's Second International Dictionary to find its keywords, and presumably the entire dictionary is in its memory. Most of the words I get are unfamiliar to me - and I know a lot of words. This means that either English has more exotic words than I realized or Googlelaar skews the keyword selection toward obscurities. In any event, a common results total for two- or three-word searches through Googlelaar is 0.