Ask HN: Google search result initial vs. actual count

1 point

8 years ago

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

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