The ahhhhhh page

This page plots the number of results obtained from google for words of the form a{n}h{m}. For example aaahh would be represented by 3,2 and is found on the grid below at 3 down and 2 across. Hover over the square to see the number of google results, you can also click to see the results in google for yourself. The actual numbers that you will see will vary from what I found over time. This data was collected on 7th January 2006.

The results are coloured based on the log of the value. Cells that are bright red have more than 8000 google results.

There are a vast number of different variations of this word on the net. Even though I have examined so far up to ah(50,50), I have not reached the region where zero hits are common. In fact in the whole 50x50 grid there are only 16 zeros. Update: I've extended it to 60x60 now and at last there are places where there are several zeros together. Still there's seven results at ah(60,60).

• The most interesting feature is that there is a diagonal straight line in the graph corresponding to combinations that have a total length of 50 characters. I would imagine that this is caused by some common text field width that is used to post to the web has a width of 50 and people just fill it up. There are lines at 75 and 80 characters too, although much less pronounced.
• The shortest word that does not occur in the results is ah(18,50) or aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
• Variations that contain either a single a or a single h are found in are distinctly more popular.
• There is a sharp fall off in popularity with more than 8 of a particular character.
• There is a lot more ahhh'ing than argh'ing.
• The variation aaaaaaaahh is an order of magnitude less popular than its neighbours such as aaaaaaaahhh.

This page can also be seen as a smaller square plot that is easier to see all at once. You can download the raw data as a csv file.

This was inspired by The Argh Page and a suggestion by Mike Smith.

This page was digg'ed on 20 Jan 2006. I've made a page that shows the traffic spike that this caused.