You’ve probably noticed the feature in Google where it suggests searches based on your partial search entry and other popular searches. Type in Elvis and Google suggests Elvis Duran, Elvis Presley, Elvis Costello, and so on.

But some searches make you scratch your head and ask “Who ever Googled THAT?” And from that puzzled question arises a new web site: Whoogles.  It’s a compendium of screen shots of some rather strange suggestions based (presumably) on queries people have actually searched for. Here’s just one example.

Take a quick visit to Whoogles and enjoy. Or play it for yourself.

Quoting Google: “As a Google user, you’re familiar with the speed and accuracy of a Google search. How exactly does Google manage to find the right results for every query as quickly as it does? The heart of Google’s search technology is PigeonRank™, a system for ranking web pages developed by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Stanford University.

Building upon the breakthrough work of B. F. Skinner, Page and Brin reasoned that low cost pigeon clusters (PCs) could be used to compute the relative value of web pages faster than human editors or machine-based algorithms. And while Google has dozens of engineers working to improve every aspect of our service on a daily basis, PigeonRank continues to provide the basis for all of our web search tools.”

Google goes into some length explaining why this process works so well, including a list of FAQs. It’s well worth understanding this aspect of Google’s technology.

In March of last year, we posted some web domains that illustrated how some people just don’t think. Well, now there’s a new batch:

From Google today: Sick of paying for broadband that you have to, well, pay for?

Introducing Google TiSP (BETA), our new FREE in-home wireless broadband service. Sign up today and we’ll send you your TiSP self-installation kit, which includes setup guide, fiber-optic cable, spindle, wireless router and installation CD.

For those who want or need paper copies of their email, Google’s Gmail service is now offering to send you paper copies of your essential Gmail emails. motto is 1) You Click 2) We Stack 3) You Get. And the amazing thing is that even with delivery to your home or office, the new service is absolutely free.

Check it out!

Newest search enhancement from Google: “When you think about it, love is just another search problem. And we’ve thought about it. A lot. Google Romance™ is our solution.”

“Google Romance is a place where you can post all types of romantic information and, using our Soulmate Search™, get back search results that could, in theory, include the love of your life. Then we’ll send you both on a Contextual Date^TM, which we’ll pay for while delivering to you relevant ads that we and our advertising partners think will help produce the dating results you’re looking for.”

Here’s the new Google Romance web site.

On the web site Web Pages That Suck, you can “learn good web design by looking at bad web design”. While some of the examples they provide may be good for an occasional chuckle, the web site really is instructional. The author, Vincent Flanders, says “My goal is to help you design effective and aesthetically pleasing web pages. My method is to show you bad design techniques so you’ll realize what they are and not use them.”

Vincent has compiled a list of web sites that are so bad, he calls them The Biggest Mistakes in Web Design 1995-2015. Somewhat amusingly, he admits that we haven’t reached 2015 yet, “but it’s human nature to repeat your mistakes over and over. But it’s human nature to repeat your mistakes over and over.”

Google returns MSN as number 1 result for a “search” search.

Update March, 2007: We see that Google got wise and now lists itself #1. Well, it was amusing while it lasted.

Enlists World’s Most Powerful Search Engine in Hunt for Madman

In a nationally televised speech today, President George W. Bush issued his most direct threat ever to Osama bin Laden, vowing to use the search engine Google to find the al-Qaeda terror leader.

“Mr. Osama bin Laden, you can run, but you can’t hide,” Mr. Bush said, with his trademark steely resolve. “Google will find you.”

Mr. Bush concluded his speech by warning the world’s most wanted madman, “I’m searching you on Google right now, and I’m feeling lucky.”

News reports that the CIA had recently disbanded a special unit dedicated to finding Mr. bin Laden suggested that the White House no longer saw his capture as a top priority, but the President’s decision to use what he called “the most powerful search engine on the Internets” sent a different message.

But even as Mr. Bush announced plans to enlist Google in the search for bin Laden, he attempted to manage the expectations of the American people, warning, “The Googling of Osama bin Laden will be a long and arduous Googling.”

Mr. Bush also acknowledged that he tried to use the auction site eBay last month to ensnare Mr. bin Laden, when news surfaced that the terror mastermind was a fan of the singer Whitney Houston.

The White House auctioned an autographed photo of Ms. Houston on the site, but the plan failed when the winning bid was made by North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il.

Editor’s note: After blogging last month about Google’s efforts to keep people from using “Google” as a verb, I couldn’t resist reprinting this piece from The Borowitz Report. If you enjoyed the satire, you can subscribe to a daily email feed of “news” stories such as this from their web site.

Concerned over the word “Google” becoming a noun in such common usage that they lose their trademark on it (like “escalator” which used to be a trademark of the Otis Elevator Company), Google is objecting to certain uses of their popular name. An article in WebProNews discusses it and cites the original article in The Washington Post, which was apparently taken to task by Google’s lawyers.

Appropriate: He ego-surfs on the Google search engine to see if he’s listed in the results.

Inappropriate: He googles himself.

Appropriate: I ran a Google search to check out that guy from the party.

Inappropriate: I googled that hottie.