7 ms·

So when I google "cows" and it says "Page 2 of about 1,210,000,000 results" you know full well you aren't going to show anywhere near 1,201,000,000 results yet

So when I google "cows" and it says "Page 2 of about 1,210,000,000 results" you know full well you aren't going to show anywhere near 1,201,000,000 results yet you program it to display that? And in fact it only shows "about 231 results" which is 0.000019234% of 1,210,000,000 results. That doesn't sound like an estimate to me. To me, that is intentional misleading.

Spooky23 4y ago
It’s a signal that your search is generic. You can refine down more and get some hint of that. Compare: “Cows” “Cows New York” “Cows Bronx New York” “Cows Bronx New York major deegan expressway” This is a dumb example, but the count drops as the search is refined. You can use this to guide a specific search as well… in a tech example, if you search for a specific log entry while troubleshooting you might get 3 results tbat appear random. Remove elements of the search and you’ll get more results and relevance.
- tolmasky 4y ago
  > It’s a signal that your search is generic. You can refine down more and get some hint of that. 1. I doubt the common person infers this from the “X results” UI, especially considering this has a literal meaning in most other search interfaces where they encounter this terminology. In fact, you don’t even have to compare it to other services, as apparently on the next page of Google results the meaning changes to the traditional literal interpretation. So on page 1 it is a weird hint, but on page 2 it is a precise count? 2. Even if that’s the purpose of this blurb, I actually still don’t know how generic my query is. I have no idea what the average result count is, so I don’t know if this is a lot or not. It’s certainly not the case that my “successful queries” are ones where there’s exactly one result, or just a few. Ironically enough, it’s the opposite: I only get so few results when I’m searching for something that’s really hard to find and Google is giving me a couple wrong results (in fact Google uses “no good matches” language in this case). Usually when I find something quickly it is merely the top result of many results. 3. If the intent is to tell me my query is pretty generic, then just say that, don’t imply it through language that has a literal meaning in all other interfaces I encounter it. Note that my gripe with this UI is not about whether it is misleading or not, but merely that if its intended purpose is to give me some hint as to how good my query is, it is not doing a good job of that.
  - Spooky23 4y ago
    There’s no subjective judgement. No rule exists that says I need to have a narrow query. If they said your query was too broad or arrow, you would be complaining about that. End of the day, it’s a number with some utility that is ignored or amusing to the majority of people. Apparently it’s very irritating to some slice of people as well.
    - tolmasky 4y ago
      But the original argument was that it was intended to tell me how generic it was? I'm just saying that I have no idea of that from that number since I don't have appropriate context. It's like a teacher telling me my kid got 10 questions right on a test. OK... out of how many? Out of 10? Or out of 100? And then that teacher being like "hey hey hey, I didn't know this was such a touchy subject. I'm just telling you your kid got 10 questions right. It's a number with some utility. If you don't like it, just ignore it." It's separately weird that the number means something different on page 1 than page 2. It's not like I lose sleep over this, I honestly wasn't even aware that the intended purpose was for it to be a "how generic is this query" marker until you posted that, so I guess I am already ignoring it. I'm just saying that if that is the intended purpose, it fails completely.
themitigating 4y ago
How is it misleading? It's an estimate of the total results, it doesn't say it's going to display them
- rufus_foreman 4y ago
  "I'll sell you about 1,201,000,000 paper clips." "OK." ships 231 paper clips "Hey I only got 231 paper clips, not 1,201,000,000." "That's right. 1,201,000,000 was an estimate." "You said about. So you estimated 1,201,000,000 paper clips but you actually only had 231?" "No, I had the full 1,201,000,000. I sold them to you but I didn't say I would ship all of them. What kind of idiot uses more than a few hundred paper clips anyway? Plus, it saves us money on shipping costs."
  - knorker 4y ago
    You're reading into this something I'm not. Waiter: What will you have this evening? Guest: Everything looks good Ok, everything, coming right up.
    - brandonmenc 4y ago
      You're just totally flipping the roles, so of course your version sounds absurd.
  - westurner 4y ago
    You haven't paid Google for search: there is no sale of product or service to you, the user using free services for free. You haven't signed any agreement with Google for search services. Google hasn't signed any agreement for future performance with you. Google is not obligated to count every search result of every free search query. You are not entitled to such resource-intensive queries. How much does COUNT() on a full table scan of billions of rows - with snippets - cost you on BigQuery or a similar pay-for-query-resources service?
    - rufus_foreman 4y ago
lossolo 4y ago
> of about 1,210,000,000 results I always read this as: "When we were crawling all the internet this phrase you are looking for was found in around 1.2 billion pages"
- kyleee 4y ago
  why can't i then spend the next year of my life paging through them?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- tomrod 4y ago
  And being a search engine that provides links relevant to said phrase, reporting what they found is their anticipated deliverable.
- throwawaylinux 4y ago
  I don't think that's the correct interpretation though, because it states they are the results of your search that are being returned to you, not the content of the wider internet. And if they just flubbed the language but their intention was that it is an estimate of the internet or their index that they never intended to provide you with, the last page wouldn't change to "Page 23 of about 221 results".
antonvs 4y ago
> It’s a signal that your search is generic. Talk about bad user interface design. Why are you trying to defend this silly practice?

Spooky23 4y ago

It’s a signal that your search is generic. You can refine down more and get some hint of that. Compare: “Cows” “Cows New York” “Cows Bronx New York” “Cows Bronx New York major deegan expressway” This is a dumb example, but the count drops as the search is refined. You can use this to guide a specific search as well… in a tech example, if you search for a specific log entry while troubleshooting you might get 3 results tbat appear random. Remove elements of the search and you’ll get more results and relevance.

tolmasky 4y ago
> It’s a signal that your search is generic. You can refine down more and get some hint of that. 1. I doubt the common person infers this from the “X results” UI, especially considering this has a literal meaning in most other search interfaces where they encounter this terminology. In fact, you don’t even have to compare it to other services, as apparently on the next page of Google results the meaning changes to the traditional literal interpretation. So on page 1 it is a weird hint, but on page 2 it is a precise count? 2. Even if that’s the purpose of this blurb, I actually still don’t know how generic my query is. I have no idea what the average result count is, so I don’t know if this is a lot or not. It’s certainly not the case that my “successful queries” are ones where there’s exactly one result, or just a few. Ironically enough, it’s the opposite: I only get so few results when I’m searching for something that’s really hard to find and Google is giving me a couple wrong results (in fact Google uses “no good matches” language in this case). Usually when I find something quickly it is merely the top result of many results. 3. If the intent is to tell me my query is pretty generic, then just say that, don’t imply it through language that has a literal meaning in all other interfaces I encounter it. Note that my gripe with this UI is not about whether it is misleading or not, but merely that if its intended purpose is to give me some hint as to how good my query is, it is not doing a good job of that.
- Spooky23 4y ago
  There’s no subjective judgement. No rule exists that says I need to have a narrow query. If they said your query was too broad or arrow, you would be complaining about that. End of the day, it’s a number with some utility that is ignored or amusing to the majority of people. Apparently it’s very irritating to some slice of people as well.
  - tolmasky 4y ago
    But the original argument was that it was intended to tell me how generic it was? I'm just saying that I have no idea of that from that number since I don't have appropriate context. It's like a teacher telling me my kid got 10 questions right on a test. OK... out of how many? Out of 10? Or out of 100? And then that teacher being like "hey hey hey, I didn't know this was such a touchy subject. I'm just telling you your kid got 10 questions right. It's a number with some utility. If you don't like it, just ignore it." It's separately weird that the number means something different on page 1 than page 2. It's not like I lose sleep over this, I honestly wasn't even aware that the intended purpose was for it to be a "how generic is this query" marker until you posted that, so I guess I am already ignoring it. I'm just saying that if that is the intended purpose, it fails completely.

themitigating 4y ago

How is it misleading? It's an estimate of the total results, it doesn't say it's going to display them

rufus_foreman 4y ago
"I'll sell you about 1,201,000,000 paper clips." "OK." ships 231 paper clips "Hey I only got 231 paper clips, not 1,201,000,000." "That's right. 1,201,000,000 was an estimate." "You said about. So you estimated 1,201,000,000 paper clips but you actually only had 231?" "No, I had the full 1,201,000,000. I sold them to you but I didn't say I would ship all of them. What kind of idiot uses more than a few hundred paper clips anyway? Plus, it saves us money on shipping costs."
- knorker 4y ago
  You're reading into this something I'm not. Waiter: What will you have this evening? Guest: Everything looks good Ok, everything, coming right up.
  - brandonmenc 4y ago
    You're just totally flipping the roles, so of course your version sounds absurd.
- westurner 4y ago
  You haven't paid Google for search: there is no sale of product or service to you, the user using free services for free. You haven't signed any agreement with Google for search services. Google hasn't signed any agreement for future performance with you. Google is not obligated to count every search result of every free search query. You are not entitled to such resource-intensive queries. How much does COUNT() on a full table scan of billions of rows - with snippets - cost you on BigQuery or a similar pay-for-query-resources service?
  - rufus_foreman 4y ago

lossolo 4y ago

> of about 1,210,000,000 results I always read this as: "When we were crawling all the internet this phrase you are looking for was found in around 1.2 billion pages"

kyleee 4y ago
why can't i then spend the next year of my life paging through them?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
tomrod 4y ago
And being a search engine that provides links relevant to said phrase, reporting what they found is their anticipated deliverable.
throwawaylinux 4y ago
I don't think that's the correct interpretation though, because it states they are the results of your search that are being returned to you, not the content of the wider internet. And if they just flubbed the language but their intention was that it is an estimate of the internet or their index that they never intended to provide you with, the last page wouldn't change to "Page 23 of about 221 results".

antonvs 4y ago

> It’s a signal that your search is generic. Talk about bad user interface design. Why are you trying to defend this silly practice?