There are hundreds of duplicates for some questions: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/9686/what-is-the-most-rampant-duplicate-on-stack-exchange-sites/16

There are hundreds of duplicates for some questions: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/9686/what-is-the-most-rampant-duplicate-on-stack-exchange-sites/168289#168289 https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/9686/what-is-the-mo... ...often, with slightly different terms used. So there's a very good chance a given search will find one of the duplicates rather than the original. This is an explicit goal: it helps searches; in fact, if you're not logged in and you land on an unanswered duplicate, Stack Overflow will redirect to the original.