

Meaningless number: 230,000,000 - deepakkapoor
http://www.thereforesystems.com/meaningless-number-230000000/

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lucianof
I don't think it's a meaningless number. Maybe I want to know compare the
frequency of two terms, then Google's estimate of results is pretty useful. On
the other hand result number 230,000,000 is certainly not useful. Well, it
might be a little useful, but there are 229,999,999 documents that Google
thinks are more useful to me, so it is a reasonable optimization by Google to
not actually prepare a results page for it.

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deepakkapoor
But what value does displaying that number add to the activity undertaken by
the user?

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bostonpete
When I'm trying to choose between two alternative spelling or phrasings of a
concept, I'll frequently google the two alternatives I'm considering to get a
sense for which is more common.

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deepakkapoor
And you measure "more common" by looking at the number of results returned?

