The following tables show page statistics gathered from searches on Google (www.google.com). The searches were on the word chess plus the name of the champion. Anyone familiar with Google (and who isn't these days?) knows that these counts are approximate, but consistent across searches.

The column on the right shows page counts taken in November 2001, while two other columns show more recent counts for the same search. The columns headed '+/-' show the increase (or decrease) in the number of pages from one count to the next.

For example, Google counted 'about' 4050 chess pages mentioning Steinitz in 2001, and 4920 pages in October 2002, an increase of 21.5% pages. The latest count of 5,600 pages is an increase of 13.8% over a few months ago.

Bobby Fischer is number two on the list. Thirty years after he won the title and ten years after his last public game, he remains a controversial, enigmatic figure.

Anatoly Karpov and Mikhail Tal also rank high. Karpov was an active player until recently. He still plays from time to time, although his best days are behind him. The games of Tal, the Magician of Riga, have always fascinated the chess public with their surprising sacrifices and impenetrably complicated play.

The next group -- Lasker, Capablanca, Alekhine, & Botvinnik -- shows an inexplicable increase in pages from October to now, with Alekhine even overtaking Tal on the list. All four players figure on most lists of the 10 Best Players Ever, but why the sudden increase in pages : has Google uncovered a previously unknown collection of pages -or- has a chess archivist released a new database of games now being included in the counts? We'll come back to this mystery in a future article if we ever solve it.

The last group -- Steinitz, Euwe, Smyslov, Petrosian, & Spassky -- are usually named in Newsgroup discussions as candidates for the weakest World Champion of all time, not that there ever was such a thing as a weak World Champion! Steinitz, the first great theoretician, deserves more respect. His scientific approach laid the foundation for the spectacular 20th century advances in the theory of the game. Spassky, a much-feared attacking player in his heyday, suffers from the unwarranted stigma of being 'the Russian fellow that lost to Fischer in 1972'.

Howard Staunton is undoubtedly aided by many pages that mention the Staunton pattern for chess sets. How many Staunton pages are for the man, and how many for the set design, is anybody's guess.

Louis-Charles de La Bourdonnais is inconspicuous. It doesn't matter whether you search his name by its correct spelling or by the common Labourdonnais, there aren't many Web pages about him.

Ruslan Ponomariov is the only player to show a decline in the number of pages over the past three months. He won his title in January 2002, and the news accounts of his exploit must be slowly disappearing from the Web. These will eventually be replaced by details of his future successes.

The Polgar sisters present a particular search problem. Susan (Zsuzsa) Polgar, who won the Women's Championship in 1996, is under-represented. Her sister Judith, better known on the Web as Judit, declines to play for the women's title, but would easily win if she chose to do so.

The recent Chinese champions, Xie Jun and Zhu Chen, show a slight increase over the previous generation of Georgians, Gaprindashvili and Maya Chiburdanidze. Zhu Chen shows the same decrease as Ponomariov, probably for the same reason.