Slashdot Mirror
Why Do Google Hit Numbers Vary?
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."
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.
An "Ask Slashdot" that actually went to the source for the answer first, without the usually bad/wrong/pointless pontificating that normally goes along with it. How long can such a good thing last, I wonder.
:Peter
What's really odd is searching for a few words with OR, and noticing that adding words actually lowers the numbers of results obtained.
this and this
## W.Finlay McWalter ## http://www.mcwalter.org ##
It's too bad Google doesn't have one of those things where you can watch everyone's search scrolling down the screen live. I bet there would be a lot of "pictures of mountains" searches right about now.
I think some engine had that (metacrawler)? back in the day, was fun to watch, and I believe they didnt censor it.
About a month ago, someone posted this story over on K5 regarding the google dance. Good to see it's run by a marketing site, I couldn't think of anyone who might have more of an interest in rankings then those bastards. :P
No wonder I couldn't find the website I was looking for! It was in those missing 10,000 websites. If I had only gotten those and checked through them as thoroughly as I checked the other 1,010,000 then I would have certainly found it.
/. page and the poll from last week appears. You'd think the Uber Midgets and Stealth Ninjas could get it right ;-)
Humor aside, this is pretty interesting. Alot like when you vote in a poll, go back to the main
Posting as directed.
like snowflakes falling
google queries melt upon
different servers
like the wild flowers
each view of the database
unique, yet alike
and...
its that time of month
google dances, results wiggle
w00t first haiku post
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
It's simple, really... mountains are the new thing in pornography. People are snapping and posting so many pictures of naughty, erotically shaped rock formations that the number of mountain pics available worldwide on the net is rising by about 10,000 every 10 minutes.
Soon, the number of phallic granite pics worldwide will even exceed the number of Jenna Jameson facials. Quite the phenomenon, really.
Finally, proof that all Ask Slashdot questions could be more quickly answered by simply checking with Google :)
314-15-9265
--naked
Very popular slashdot journal for adul
Results have been inconsistent ever since they let those damn pigeons unionize. He's obviously covering for the union.
"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.
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.
Remember cookies are kept in all browsers.
When a search engine finds those relating to their advertisers or 'favored sites' those are 'extended' into a higher level.
Some results may be discarded if certain advertisers don't like you to see those competing sites.
Uhhh, no. A domain can only see their OWN cookies.
bevis: Huh-huh. They said *mountains*. Huh-huh.
*smack*
butt_head: They are slashdot. They make such references to screw up the google database, thus completly validating their newstories. Inevitable reposts will bump the number even higher!
bevis: like a conspiracy. huh-huh
butt_head: conspiracies are cool!
If a man's character is to be abused there's nobody like a relative to do the business. -Thackeray, William
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.
Steven? Is that you? Dude - you're smoking too much pot!
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
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?
- who cares....as long as it works
You, sir, will never be a geek.Perhaps we should Ask Jeeves.
Hmmmmmm?
I suspect that Google employs the nucular radiation-enhanced, super pigeons as actual editors (as opposed to the slashdot phenomenon). Regular columbiformes are probably relegated to mundane crawling/pecking duty.
My site, which is admittedly somewhat unique, has been listed in the top 5 for over 18 months now if the appropriate keywords are used.
Of course, it also helps that those keywords are snarklbort, giffleblag and byzgetford.
... anyone care to tell me what they see
on this one?
This space for rent.
so you may connect to any one of several servers. The servers each have different databases to pool results from and different caches to display.
A google search for my site returns our old site that has had dead dns records for nearly a month above my new site. Sometimes my new site pulls into the lead, sometimes it isn't there, and at least one cache has the announcement that the old name was lost and a domain was purchased.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
Results can also vary due to the Google Dance.
Google has 7 data centers each with a copy of it's index and these are "usually" mapped to www.google.com. But google also has versions located at www2.google.com and www3.google.com.
During the monthly update there can be different version of the index on each of the 3 versions. A website www.google-dance-tool.1hut.com provides results for a search done on all 3 of googles index.
To check to see if the google dance is happening the most common technique is to check the "back links" for mayor sites like Yahoo by typing "link:www.yahoo.com" into the search box. this will list all the sites with links to "www.yahoo.com".
The Google Dance Tool site mentioned checks google every 5 minutes to see if the dance is on. Once it is started it sends out an automated email to subscribers (like me) so I can visit the site and see what the search positions for the next month on google will be using their google dance tool search.
Google uses Dmoz as a pagerank source. Just submit your site through Google's forms, I've had stuff listed within 1-2 days.
OliverWillis.Com
An Operative with an Agenda
Everyone knows it's because of he pigeons. Everytime you have an analog element, such as a pigeon, in the equation your end result will vary.
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.
Slashdot is right vs. Slashdot is wrong:
slashdot sucks vs. slashdot rules:
slashdot correct vs. slashdot incorrect:
Cmdrtaco vs. cowboyneal
News for nerds vs. Stuff that Matters
So Google has more then one datacenter to cache Slashdot and Slashot often caches itself when it dupes storys. So the cached story on Google is a dupe of perveious story but Google's second datacenter purges ths story because it is a dupe and then is reposted again on Slashdot when is purged by the first datacenter and duped again and purged by second datacenter and cached on the third and duped by slashdot....*bang*
See judge he needed killing. He was stuck. It was a mercy killing...
Slashdot, home of supporters of free software, free music, and free speech.Except for Moderators that disagree with you.
Spell Check:
Type in candidate spellings of a word, and assume the spelling with the most search results is the right one:
'amatuer' -> 3.9e6 hits, 'amateur' -> 35e6 hits. Amateur it is.
'modelling' -> 2.6e6 hits, 'modeling' -> 5.7e6 hits. Close call, perhaps both are acceptable?
Ego Boost:
Everyone knows about this one: see what comes up under your own name (put it in quotes if necessary)- Hopefully if you run a small website or comment with your real name frequently in a google searchable place that'll come up first. But you'll have to work hard to beat out all those genealogy sites that just list thousands of names, graveyard roll-calls and whatnot. Oh, and there's some court case from five years ago where you're name is featured prominently. My namesake is shared with one of the first shaken babies to die and become a major local (wherever it happened) newstory- not much of a boost after all.
Stalking:
I'd imagine this pretty similar to the previous, but with names of other people you know or used to know: your old college sweetheart died in 1892! Wait...
Trademark pre-research .com,.org,or .net site with the same name resolves, just in case.
You need a product name- something fresh and original, and easily googleable? Start with a few ideas, and use a thesaurus (and don't forget cool foreign language words/roots) to refine the name until google hits are down to a zero. Run words together or otherwise potential customers will end up at sites that just randomly use those words at different points of the text- assume the customer is too dumb or lazy to use quotes.
'NodeZero' is my new badass something-or-other- wait there's 1K hits, how about 'NodeNull'? Only 8 now, that's good, but better yet try 'NodeNothing'- zero results.
After the google test see if the
I'm sure there's many more...
Oh, page hits?! Err, nevermind.
Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.
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.
http://www7.scu.edu.au/programme/fullpapers/1921/c om1921.htm
"If anything can go wrong, it will." - Murphy
I'll get my coat...
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.