Mystery Google

Imagine a search engine where you get what the person before you searched for. Well, you don’t have to imagine too hard just visit http://www.mysterygoogle.com/ to experience it for yourself. Why would you do it? Let's discuss.

I tried to ring Google offices in Singapore to see if I could get an explanation but it was lunch time and there was no answer. So, I checked it out for myself and spent a good 15 minutes on the site trying to figure out what the hell its purpose is.

I type in “earthquake” and I get search results for “university of south Florida”. Ok, I guess there is a market out there for people who are curious to get other people’s search results – or just want to spend a few minutes seeing what other people are searching for.

But it gets creepy (or funny depending which football club you support) when I typed in “Manchester United” and get “anyways brad and jake touched me all weird that night and were all over me”.


Still, I did spend 15 minutes of my life trying to see if there was any patterns emerging (yeah good luck!) from my search results. From what I can tell most of the search results are random (try searching Manchester United for yourself and you’ll see) or even try “Yahoo.” I got “go outside I need a clear shot” when I entered Yahoo in Mystery Google.

The only things I’ve discovered so far which are not random is when you type “Mystery Google” and search. The result is a message on the search bar telling me “that is the site you are on.”

And when you search for “Google” it says “No. Mystery Google.”

There’s even a copyright message at the bottom which reads: © Mystery Google, 2009 | GOOGLE is a trademark of Google Inc.

Whatever it is, I am sure someone with enough smarts and time will figure it out. So far, the only search term I’ve entered which correctly takes me to the site is “Facebook”. I did it several times. Search for “Facebook” in Mystery Google and it will take you straight to the Facebook home page.

Oh yeah, if you don't type anything and hit search it tells you to "please don't type gibberish".

If you do type "gibberish" - it responds to you sarcastically!

And gets angry when you only search for "mystery" as well...