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Why Do Google Hit Numbers Vary?

Posted by timothy on from the horse-mouth-opens dept.

Supa-Fly writes "I have a question about some conflicting results with the search engine google. I did a search for "pictures of mountains" and got exactly 1 million results. My friend did the same search (from the same office)and got 1,010,000 results. A second friend did the same search as the last 2 and got 1,020,000. These have not changed and every person gets the same results each time. My question is what is up with the discrepancies on google's search results?" Since this question is hard to answer from the outside, Craig Silverstein of Google kindly supplies his best answer to this question, below.

Craig writes: "Thanks for the great question. We get this from time to time and hopefully I can clear up some of the confusion. The number of estimated pages listed to the top right of a Google search results page is indeed, an estimate. It's a good estimate but still, an estimate.

There are many reasons why one might see a difference in the estimated number of pages returned for the same query. It's most likely the queries made by your co-workers were sent to different Google datacenters in what appears to have been a round-robin fashion. The index at any given Google datacenter can change slightly over the course of a day (each index is refreshed completely every three to four weeks). Depending on which datacenter finishes a query, the estimated number of results may vary.

Without having direct access to your environment it is hard for me to tell for sure, however, I believe this is the case."

19 of 362 comments (clear)

  1. Interesting Google phenomena by ergo98 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Several weeks back I happened to mention a very nice new restaurant in Toronto on one of my pages, and within days shot to the #2 position on Google when searching for several variants of this restaurants name. I knew this by the fact that suddenly I was seeing closing on a hundred hits per day of people looking for this restaurant. Note that this restaurant has such a unique name that there are only around 5 pages of links in all anyways. Anyways suddenly the hits entirely stopped, and a search on Google found my page was purged from the database: Despite it being a unique name with few hits, it no longer even registered. A week later suddenly it was back in the #2 spot again.

    No idea why this happened, but it is entertaining to see it vary.

    1. Re:Interesting Google phenomena by ergo98 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The interesting thing is that I really don't want hits, and never put the page up intending so (I gain no profit from people looking for this restaurant), but it just was sort of an offhanded thing where I mentioned it and due to the unique name and the exclusivity of it, suddenly got lots of hits. Didn't mention it merely because I don't intend to solicit or the like, but I thought it was interesting how the Google database seemed to rollback a transaction (albeit like a week long transaction) and didn't recover until the next spider.

    2. Re:Interesting Google phenomena by lemox · · Score: 5, Interesting

      It's called the "Google Dance", which is mentioned in an earlier comment.

      --

      "We obviously need a new moderation category: (-1, Woo-fucking-hoo)" --Mr. AC

  2. number oddities by millette · · Score: 4, Interesting

    What's really odd is searching for a few words with OR, and noticing that adding words actually lowers the numbers of results obtained.

  3. googledance by wfmcwalter · · Score: 5, Interesting
    There's a number of websites (dare I say "fansites") devoted to the study of google result variance - the so-called googledance.

    this and this

    --
    ## W.Finlay McWalter ## http://www.mcwalter.org ##
  4. Removed the word "of"... by GuidoDEV · · Score: 2, Interesting

    ...and got 40,000 more search results (10,010,000 to 10,050,000). "Of" isn't included in the original search anyway, so I wonder why removing it yields a different estimate.

    1. Re:Removed the word "of"... by creative_name · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Probably for the same reason that the original search numbers were different for different people. As others have said, when Google removes the word 'of' it essentially treats it as if there was an 'and' there. If you remove 'of' manually it does the exact same thing.

      Guido, my good man, I do believe you have witnessed first hand the not-so-elusive google-dance.

      --
      Posting as directed.
  5. Some different results by jsprat · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Here's what I get:

    "pictures of mountains" 986,000
    "pictures of of mountains" 1,010,000
    "pictures of of of mountains" 1,020,000
    Two of these pages had a different top-ranked link.
    Funny thing, all three times Google told me "of is a very common word and was not included in my search", but it made a difference!

    Regardless of these results, Google is the best search engine. Period.

    1. Re:Some different results by Wild+Wizard · · Score: 4, Interesting

      has no one metioned the advanced settings you can use that changes what sites you get in a search

      w/english only
      1,010,000

      w/all languages
      1,040,000

      w/strict filter and all languages
      903,000

      w/strict filter and english only
      881,000

    2. Re:Some different results by Flakeloaf · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Deciding to test Google's AI, I took this a step further:

      all things are not always are not always you need to know you learned from Dr Richard s Wallace.: 2,240

      all things are not always are not always are not always me need to know me learned from Dr Richard s Wallace: 3,900,000

      But all things are not always are not always are not always are not always you need to know you learned from Dr Richard s Wallace: 5,490,000

      But all things are not always are not always are not always are not always are not always me need to know me learned from Dr Richard s Wallace: 5,490,000

      etc.

      --

      Am I the only one who heard Roxette to sing "I'm gonna get blitzed for some sex"?

  6. I have to wonder... by greechneb · · Score: 3, Interesting

    If this is the same reason that when I search, I get a list of 7 pages, and then after getting to page 5, there are only 6 pages. I would think that they would have a cookie set saying which server they are gathering their data for each search though...

    It is kind of aggrevating to be expecting 7 pages, and get only 6, I always think that the mystical disappearing page contains my wanted result though. :(

  7. Google Images filters by Antity · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Google is still beating my photo album...I searched for pictures of mountains, and only found 3. And two of those are debatable.

    Ever tried to turn off Google Images' "You-really-don't-want-to-see-this" filter?

    I mean.. You were searching for "pictures" of "mountains"... Big breasts, that is? ;-) Nah.

    It's "&safe=off", and people outside the US might want to change the language to English before trying to use it (hint).

    Funny thing here in Germany is: The filter is ALWAYS ON, and in the German preferences, there's no option to turn it off. After you change your language to English (URL), though, there suddenly appears an option for disabling the filter... Try talking about censorship (there are not even clear rules about what exactly they are filtering, and there's no explanation why you can't turn it off over here; even worse: They don't even tell you that there IS a filter and that it's always active).

    I asked Google about this, but never got a response.

    --
    42. Easy. What is 32 + 8 + 2?
  8. There is only one way to solve this... by SystematicPsycho · · Score: 1, Interesting

    google fight!

    It's the answer to every problem.

    --
    Analytic & algebraic topology of locally Euclidean meterization of infinitely differentiable Riemmanian manifold
  9. Ugly Hullabaloo by swordboy · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Here's some radio commentary on the subjet matter. I heard it the other day on Public Radio International. An interesting read and somewhat related...

    --

    Life is the leading cause of death in America.
  10. Google cheats by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    They claim 76,300,000 pages with 'computer' try actually getting past 1000. It just stops.

  11. heres why it jumps by deft · · Score: 4, Interesting

    google employs a sreach spider called the freshbot. the freshbot spiders constantly, looking for new content, and periodically injects those results into the search engine listings at the data center. these results drop and return sometimes.

    chances are your site was freshbotted, dropped, and re-catalogged. it could also be a result of the 'dance' at the end of each month when google is updating its search results. rankings fluctuate alot at that time.

    --

    There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
  12. Intrestinly, I've the 10th page on "autopr0n" by autopr0n · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Which is really annoying. All the other pages are just pages discussing my site. Autopr0n.com used to be the #1 result for a search on "autopr0n" and I got tons of hits from people doing just that.

    --
    autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
  13. Re:uh... (sex) by child_of_mercy · · Score: 2, Interesting

    check your referrers log

    are they coming to you for just that word?

    --
    'There is a Light that never goes out.'
  14. Try reading: The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertex by Prof.Phreak · · Score: 4, Interesting
    try reading: The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine

    http://www7.scu.edu.au/programme/fullpapers/1921/c om1921.htm

    --

    "If anything can go wrong, it will." - Murphy