Google Poetry

About

Google Poetry refers to the unintentionally poetic autocomplete results displayed in Google search suggesstions, which are often shared in the form of screenshots on the community sites Tumblr and Reddit.

Origin

On October 25th, 2012, the “Google Poetics” single topic Tumblr blog was launched, which highlights screenshots of poetic Google search suggestions. The first post highlighted a screenshot of several autocomplete results for the search query “why do you” (shown below).

Precursor

In October 2002, the web application Googlism^[7] was launched, which submits a keyword to Google Search and displays a list of common queries containing the word. The use of apps like Googlism to create poems has been associated with the avant-garde flarf poetry movement.^[6]

Spread

On October 29th, 2012, the @GooglePoetrics Twitter feed was launched, which highlights notable Google autocomplete suggestions accompanied by the hashtag #GooglePoems. In the first two years, the account gathered over 61,000 followers.

what do I do with yard waste what do I do with yellow squash what do I do with you #GooglePoemspic.twitter.com/0IUHMo9f56

— Google Poetics (@GooglePoetics) March 6, 2014

On March 6th, 2013, the /r/googlepoems^[1] subreddit was launched, where users submit screenshots of various Google search suggestion results. Within one year, the subreddit gained upwards of 5,700 subscribers. On March 9th, The Huffington Post^[3] published an article which highlighted several notable examples from the subreddit. On June 10th, BuzzFeed^[5] published a compilation of examples from the Google Poetics Tumblr blog superimposed over various photographs depicting humorous autocomplete results (shown below).

Notable Examples

Search Interest

External References