It's a whacky world

It is indeed a "whacky" world,  but not a "wacky" one I'm afraid, as we will see below.

Now suppose you were trying to demonstrate that you had specific expertise in your field - how would you do it?

Well, the normal way is to quietly and deliberately set out your knowledge in a logical and persuasive manner. However, as a management consultant I see all too frequently that when people either have very weak arguments or are unsure of the intellectual territory in which they find themselves, they resort to using jargon to make themselves appear more knowledgeable than they really are.

So supposing that you were trying to construct a very weak case that the absence of a site in Google search at a particular time has some meaning in relation to a point you are trying to make then you might submit your evidence like this, using the (misspelled) jargon term "Googlewhack" to make your evidence seem more "expert".

Now the search may well have generated zero results, but that is not a "Googlewack" - (or even a Googlewhack to give it the correct spelling).

In fact a Googlewhack is "a type of contest for finding a Google search query consisting of exactly two words without quotation marks, that returns exactly one hit. A Googlewhack must consist of two actual words found in a dictionary. A Googlewhack is considered legitimate if both of the searched-for words appear in the result page." (Source - Wikipedia)

The site http://www.googlewhack.com/ confirms
"Your goal: find that elusive query (two words - no quote marks) with a single, solitary result! ." The site also confirms that "Rule Number One: Your two Googlefactors must exist in Google's view of legitimate words in this dictionary. "

The arithmetically capable amongst you will immediately grasp the obvious fact that "twongalupa" is one word and not two. It apparently returned zero and not one hits, and as a made up word it would not qualify as a "Googlefactor" for a "Googlewhack" even if it WERE split into two words. This is NOT a Googlewhack. It is not even close to being one.

Was it a mistake - a brief moment of forgetfullness? No he does it again on the next page (but at least he almost manages to spell the term properly this time)

No Google results, single word, not in any dictionary. Oh dear. Not a Googlewhack at all then.

So it seems that our "expert" is displaying his surprising level of ignorance, by using, and even misspelling jargon that he really does not understand, in an effort to bolster his credibility.

I wasn't terribly impressed. I wonder if his client was?