Googlewhack

 

What Does Googlewhack Mean?

A Googlewhack is a search term that uses two or more words and returns only one result. This means that there is only one Web page on the entire World Wide Web that contains that search query, which is rare. Google Whacking is considered a type of Web sport.

The emergence of terms like Googlewhacking reflects the disproportionate impact that Google has on Web users worldwide, despite the existence of other search engines. Despite attempts by other parties like Microsoft to alter these habits (in Microsoft’s case, through its own Bing search engine) Google has remained the default search engine for many millions of users. This in turn has led to dominant market positioning for Google leadership and an outsized reputation for its founders.

The term Googlewhack also falls into a larger category of tech slang that has risen up around technologies that were nonexistent or obscure just a short time ago. Journalists and others may analyze, or even coin, these terms as they investigate how technology and society influence each other.