Dave Gorman's Googlewhack Adventure - Dave Gorman

When two of my favourite past-times collide I am always eager to study the results. So when Dave Gorman wrote a book about Googlewhacking he combined the Internet with humour to produce an intriguing and must read book that I simply could not ignore.

As Dave Gorman skipped through his inbox one morning little did he know his life was about to change dramatically. Amongst the offers of cheap Viagra and even cheaper Ink cartridges was an intriguingly titled email from an unknown sender, the email was titled “Googlewhack” and that word alone was enough to intrigue Dave as he went against basic email etiquette and opened and unknown email from an unknown sender. Luckily the mysterious email was not a virus in disguise but a short and mystifying note from a chap called Stevo, it read –

“G`day Davo, Did you know you’re a googlewhack? Stevo”

Naturally Dave was completely nonplussed by the whole email and so contacted the aforementioned Stevo with the simple question “What the hell is a Googlewhack?” Stevo`s reply was to trigger a journey taking in many thousands of miles and countless hours of cramped leg room on plane after plane. According to Stevo a Googlewhack was part of a game called Googlewhacking played with the internet search engine of choice, Google. Stevo had entered the two words - Francophile Namesakes and Google had returned 1 single web page with those two words on, and that website happened to be Dave Gorman’s homepage www.davegorman.com. The basic premise is that the player enters two words into Google with the express aim to just get 1 single result returned, that being 1 page from the 4 billion that Google searches! “Sounds like fun” thought Dave; “I’ll give it a go myself”, unfortunately this little game that should really take no more than half an hour of a persons life turned out to consume Dave Gorman completely, this was particularly worrying to his agent who was under the impression that Dave was writing a novel. Instead Dave used the advance he had received for the novel to personally visit every Googlewhack he found, the idea then was for that Googlewhack to find two more Googlewhacks that Dave could visit and so on with the ultimate aim to get a chain of ten Googlewhacks before his 32nd birthday.

What follows is a hilarious journey to several countries around the globe, with Dave meeting Googlewhacks from all walks of life. From a Mini loving welsh group called the Rarebit Nutters to a sexually confused Australian who had a website entitled “I wish I was a Minogue”. Along the way Dave makes a host of friends and a couple of enemies and ends up with an intriguing tattoo on his arm.

This really is a clever book, it combines travel with a quest to complete a task that on the surface seems stupid but yet grips the reader form the very first pages. I felt every frustration that Dave Gorman did as Googlewhack after Googlewhack turned out to be a false trail, I hoped against hope that he could make his ten in a row before his 32nd birthday, I laughed at some of the stupidity Dave was faced with, I marvelled at some of the amazing coincidences that Googlewhacking bought up and I smiled at the genuine good nature of the majority of people when faced with a stranger asking to be Googlewhacked. This is the sort of book that leaves you feeling good about the world, and good about the people who live in it, it can be nothing but the full five stars from me.

ISBN: - 0091891965
www.randomhouse.co.uk
www.davegorman.com
www.google.co.uk

●PS●

It would be impossible and a little daft if having read this book I hadn’t tried a little Googlewhacking myself. So it was on a chill March evening that I logged on to the internet and bought up Google in my web browser. Now Googlewhacking is a lot harder than you might expect and I found myself no better off after 15 minutes of furious Googlewhacking at the computer. I got close, 11 hits, 8 hits, even 3 hits yet the elusive 1 hit seemed beyond me. Just when I was about to call it a night I hit Googlewhacking gold, by entering the two words – Gimps Transmogrification, I was greeted with a single web page returned by Google. I had done it! Out of four billion web-pages there is only one with those two words contained in it.

So where was this four billion to one chance located? Maybe America or the Far East? Well no, I mentioned that Dave Gorman hit a few coincidences on his Googlewhacking trail and it seems that I have done the same. Of all the places in the world my Googlewhack belongs to a web site selling rare records based in Essex, not ten miles from where I’m sitting now. It certainly is a small world; I just wouldn’t want to Googlewhack it!