Swastika: hot trend or web code curiosity?

The swastika, the symbol of Nazism, still provokes strong feelings of fear and anger. So it was something of a shock when late last week the swastika suddenly hit the top of Google’s Hot Trends list, which tracks the 100 terms US Google users are searching for most furiously. It hovered there for several hours. Then the swastika disappeared from the list.

It became the Web mystery du jour: How did the swastika get there, why did it become so popular and who, or what, caused its demise? The search for the answer sent Google-watchers on a chase that led through China, Tel Aviv, London, and finally back to the secretive company’s Silicon Valley, California, headquarters, from which Google issued a rare apology.

The tale began Thursday when Web users started to notice that one of Google’s most intensively searched terms that morning was not a term at all, but a symbol — the swastika. Often, the terms on the list reflect a burst of interest in some news or commerce related event, and readers can use the list as a kind of cultural heat map. Yet somehow the swastika had ascended to the top of the list without a single swastika-related news story.

Various theories made their way around. A blogger named Dan at a site called “tdaxp” noticed the strange phenomenon. “The swastika is a traditional Chinese good-luck character, the Olympics are coming up, and good luck is on the Chinese mind.”