Let Me Google That For You / LMGTFY

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About

Let Me Google That For You^[1] (abbreviated LMGTFY) is a single serving site powered by Google's search engine that can simulate a custom search query in an animated sequence. LMGTFY is typically linked in forum discussions or comments on social networking sites as a sarcastic response to a question that can be easily answered by using a search engine, similar to the use of the acronym RTFM.

History

Let Me Google That For You was created on November 18th, 2008 by web developer Jim Garvin^[2] and software consultant Ryan McGeary.^[3] Prior to the site’s creation, the phrase “let me Google that for you” had been used in the same manner on the MetaFilter MetaTalk board^[10] in January 2007 and Snopes message board^[6] in March 2007, though it is unclear whether or not the phrase had inspired the creation of LMGTFY. In the following week of the site's launch, LMGTFY was featured on Laughing Squid^[11], Lifehacker^[18], Gizmodo^[19] and CNET.^[20]

The site has since been discussed on a number of message boards including 4chan^[22], the Adobe Community^[23], Quora^[24], Wowhead^[25] and MacRumors^[26], who banned its use in May 2009. In 2012, Let Me Google That For You was named one of Time's 50 Best Websites^[27] of the year. As of August 2013, Let Me Google That For You has more than 6,100 Twitter^[28] followers and 39,000 Facebook^[29] fans. They also provide a live feed^[30] of search queries entered into the system.

Features

The site offers a search box that looks similar to the Google homepage where the user can type the search query. It then provides a link that can be shared with the person asking the question, which will show an animation of the query being typed in the box before giving the search results (shown below). As of August 2013, Let Me Google That For You is available in 56 languages including Klingon.

As early as 2012, they began to launch their own spinoff sites including Let Me Snopes That For You^[7], Let Me Wikipedia That For You^[8] and Let Me Bing That For You.^[9] However, these spinoffs do not simulate the search interface of the site they are for, which has been criticized^[12] by fans.

Derivatives

The first third-party parody site that also mimicked the search interface was Let Me Bing That For You, which launched in October 2009. In October 2009, the first known parody site^[13] using Microsoft's Bing search engine was launched (shown below, left). As early as 2012, the creators of LMGTFY began working on a series of spinoff sites, including Let Me Snopes That For You^[7], Let Me Wikipedia That For You^[8] and Let Me Bing That For You.^[9] Since then, a handful of other third-party parody sites have emerged, including ones for Snopes^[14] (shown below, right), Duck Duck Go^[15] and Wikipedia.^[16] In 2013, Let Me Refresh That For You^[17] was launched, which automatically refresh pages for the user at intervals between 5 seconds and 30 minutes.

Traffic

Let Me Google That For You has a global Alexa^[4] rank of 8,121 and US rank of 5,199 as of August 2013. The site is ranked 25,499 in the US on Quantcast^[5], and reaches an estimated 53,640 people according to their data as of the same month.