I was monkeying around with Google a bit.

One nice feature of Google is that if you accidentally mistype something you’re searching for, Google tries to guess the text that you intended to type.

I’ll actually use this as a feature in some cases. Say there’s a scientific phenomena or some other such thing for which I can’t quite remember the proper name.

I’ll pop a close approximation of it into Google, and I’ll usually be able to get the correct spelling of what I’m looking for after hitting “Search”, often displayed to me as:

Did you mean: [correctly spelled term]

So, I thought it would be funny if I got Google to say something naughty, like Did you mean: asshole

But dammit, it appears that Google doesn’t like to swear.

I did a little scientific experiment, using a more common expletive, “asshole” and compared it with a lesser-used though no less colorful word, “asswipe”.

First, let’s type in the words with their correct spelling.

Search for asshole:

Ooh! Over 24 million hits. That’s a pretty popular swear word.

Now let’s search for asswipe:

That’s not a shabby search result total, but at under 400,000 that’s significantly smaller than the results for asshole.

Now, let’s intentionally misspell both words, in the exact same manner.

Let’s search for asssdwipee

Hmm, no results, but Google thinks I might be looking for “asswipe”.

Now let’s search for asssdholee

No results, and Google has no suggestions for me! It doesn’t matter that “asshole” brings back 60 times the results that “asswipe” does, and that I am misspelling the two words in the same exact manner. Sorry, Google cannot help you!

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I am of course not constructing a scientific theory backed up by hills of proofs and anecdotal evidence.

However, I challenge you to type in some text in Google where it will suggest the word “asshole” as what you were really searching for. Come to think of it, why not also try to get Google to suggest any of the seven dirty words?

UPDATE:

My brother took my challenge, and I must say I am impressed.