Google Hacks

What Does Google Think Of...

What does Google think of you, your friends, your neighborhood, or your favorite movie?

If you’ve ever wondered what people think of your home town, your favorite band, your favorite snack food, or even you, Googlism (http://www.googlism.com/) may provide you something useful.

The Interface

The interface is dirt simple. Enter your query and check the appropriate radio button to specify whether you’re looking for a who, a what, a where, or a when. You can also use the tabs to see what other objects people are searching for and what searched-for objects are the most popular. A word of warning: some of these are not work-safe.

What You Get Back

Googlism will respond with a list of things Google believes about the query at hand, be it a person, place, thing, or moment in time. For example, a search for Perl and “What” returns, along with a laundry list of others:

Perl is a fairly straightforward
Perl is aesthetically pleasing
Perl is just plain fun

Among the more humorous results for Steve Jobs and “Who” are:

steve jobs is my new idol
steve jobs is at it again
steve jobs is apple's focus group

To figure out what page any particular statement comes from, simply copy and paste it into a plain old Google search. That last statement, for instance, came from an article titled “Innovation: How Apple does it” at http://www.gulker.com/ra/appleinnovation.html.

Practical Uses

For the most part this is a party hack—a good party hack. Its a fun way to aggregate related statements ...