Remember the craze for ‘Googlewhacking’? This was where a search for two words on Google brought back only one result. Comedian Dave Gorman, while failing to write a novel, went on a madcap series of adventures all because of Googlewhacking. He had to find a chain of ten ‘whacks’ – visiting each person responsible for the website and getting them to provide ‘whacks’, and so on – before his 32nd birthday. It’s a funny travel book, which I suppose is now of historical value because it evidences the time in the early 2000s when more people were getting online! It’s old enough to explain to the reader that Google is an internet search engine and to use phrases such as ‘surfing the net’ and ‘world wide web’.
This is the third and last time I’ve read the book. Originally I was drawn to it in a charity shop because of the amusing cover, which shows Dave Gorman sitting astride a computer mouse. I haven’t been tempted to try Googlewhacking since perhaps one or two attempts when I first heard of it (around 2005 probably) and I doubt it would work properly now that search engines are tailored and filtered, etc.
First published in 2004 by Ebury.