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Swastika Shows Up as Number 1 Search Trend on Google

by Tom Samiljan on July 10, 2008 at 09:40 AM



We've see a lot of crazy search trends on Google and other online search engines, but nothing prepared us for the shocking number one search trend that we saw on Google's list of top search terms this morning: a Swastika, the Hindu-symbol-of-peace that was then hijacked by the Nazis and mostly now symbolizes....Nazis, neo or otherwise.

We first saw news of this on the Drudge Report, which has a screenshot of the symbol appearing as the number one search term. By the time we got to the page, however, it was already down to number 3 (as you can see from our above screen shot, taken this AM).

How one even creates a swastika with a computer is beyond us -- though we guess you could just cut and paste it into the search field -- but this is no doubt the work of hackers or some sort of neo-Nazi Google bomb.

When you click on the term on the Google Hot Trends page, you get a bunch of links in Chinese, so could it just be something random and coincidental, or some kind of Chinese character we're misreading? We're not so sure: Pretty much all of the Chinese-language links you get when you actually click on the symbol refer to the word swastika. Maybe there was some big article about swastikas on the news in China today? We also looked up the swastika character in a Chinese character dictionary, and it means swastika in Chinese, too.

Here's hoping Google gets its search trend tallies in order today. [Source: Google Hot Trends, via Drudge Report]


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Tags: breaking news, BreakingNews, google

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