
Ask HN: Google search result initial vs. actual count - davidjnelson
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?<p>For instance, running the query:<p>free online revenue growth modeling tool<p>says &quot;About 5,970,000 results (0.70 seconds)&quot;.<p>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: &quot;Page 3 of about 236 results (0.65 seconds)&quot;.<p>I looked into it a bit but didn&#x27;t see any info on it.  Curious if anyone here knows.  Thanks!<p>Edit: based on this analysis, it seems the distributed systems implementation is part of it, and user behavior is another part of it https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.quora.com&#x2F;Why-does-Google-only-return-50-pages-of-10-results-when-it-claims-that-there-are-560-000-results
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Anecdote: 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?

