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Ask HN: Google search result initial vs. actual count
Does anyone know why google searches say an enormous number when you search, but then show an extremely small fraction of that number of results?
For instance, running the query:
free online revenue growth modeling tool
says "About 5,970,000 results (0.70 seconds)".
Clicking into the result pages though, there are no more links when paging 100 results at a time, and you end up with this on the third page: "Page 3 of about 236 results (0.65 seconds)".
I looked into it a bit but didn't see any info on it. Curious if anyone here knows. Thanks!
Edit: based on this analysis, it seems the distributed systems implementation is part of it, and user behavior is another part of it https://www.quora.com/Why-does-Google-only-return-50-pages-of-10-results-when-it-claims-that-there-are-560-000-results
- textmode 9y agoAnecdote: In the early days of www search engines, before Google, I recall this total number of documents searched being much more important to www users. I believe when Google began vying with AltaVista as the most popular search engine, that total was an important signal. Users wanted to feel they were tapping the largest database of www pages. With AltaVista, a user could page through 100's of pages of results. There was no temporary IP ban triggered as there is today if one tries this with Google. It's unfortunate that many www users of today never experienced the old AltaVista and being able to dig deep into pages of results without triggering IP bans. They thus are unaware of alternatives to the way Google has set up their search engine. The question I have is: Do you think Google's approach of restricting users to only the top, "most popular" results is more beneficial to users or to Google? Why is Google limiting the user's search in this way?