Incorrect number of Google search results Thread poster: Kate Chaffer
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Kate Chaffer
Italy
Local time: 18:16
Member (2009)
Italian to English
I've noticed that sometimes, when I search for a particular phrase using Google, there appear to be thousands of results but when I click on the second or third page of results, the number decreases dramatically. One example is the phrase "spine of the river". I wasn't sure whether it was used in English so I put it in Google and got this:
... See more I've noticed that sometimes, when I search for a particular phrase using Google, there appear to be thousands of results but when I click on the second or third page of results, the number decreases dramatically. One example is the phrase "spine of the river". I wasn't sure whether it was used in English so I put it in Google and got this:
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q="spine%20of%20the%20river"&hl=en&rlz=1I7GGIT_it&filter=0
(587,000 results)
If I then click on the last results page I get this:
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&rlz=1I7GGIT_it&q="spine%20of%20the%20river&start=50&sa=N
(21 results)
Even by allowing all the 'very similar entries', I only get 37 results.
Although not a huge problem for me, it is misleading. I initally though that the phrase was very widely used. Can someone please explain if this is a problem with my settings or if it's a Google bug?
Thanks! ▲ Collapse
| | | | | I think it depends on how you insert the phrase in question | Feb 26, 2010 |
Hello Kate,
Doesn't this depend on how you insert the phrase?
For example, when I opened the first link, it showed 700,000 hits for "spine of the river". And when I clicked the second link you posted here, I only got 22 hits. But the second one was searched with the phrase "spine in the river, without a closing ". There are also pages for pages from the UK, which I believe would show different results depending on how you enter the phrase spine in the river using the "... See more Hello Kate,
Doesn't this depend on how you insert the phrase?
For example, when I opened the first link, it showed 700,000 hits for "spine of the river". And when I clicked the second link you posted here, I only got 22 hits. But the second one was searched with the phrase "spine in the river, without a closing ". There are also pages for pages from the UK, which I believe would show different results depending on how you enter the phrase spine in the river using the "s or without them.
However, IMHO, is it really misleading? At least to me, it's not. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Kate Chaffer
Italy
Local time: 18:16
Member (2009)
Italian to English
TOPIC STARTER | | 565,000 on my browser | Feb 26, 2010 |
I just tried searching "spine of the river" with "s added at the beginning and the end on my browser, and I got 565,000 hits. I use IE 6.0, and instead of "pages from the UK", I have "search pages in Japanese" on the right side (left side is of course, "search from the web"), since I have a Japanese OS installed. Maybe you have google this to find out the discrepancies??
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Neil Coffey 
United Kingdom
Local time: 17:16
French to English
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| It's a Google "tolerance" | Feb 26, 2010 |
Kate Chaffer wrote:
Although not a huge problem for me, it is misleading. I initally though that the phrase was very widely used. Can someone please explain if this is a problem with my settings or if it's a Google bug?
This is a Google "feature", shall we say. Their system does its best to give you a rough count within a very short space of time, and sometimes the count is wildly inaccurate. They assume that overall, an inaccurate count instantaneously is more useful than an accurate count that takes half an hour (and inordinate server resources) to produce.
How do they calculate their estimates? As far as I'm aware, they haven't published this information, but what they *may* do is use a statistical algorithm. In other words, they calculate a set of accurate counts of certain queries (e.g. common ones), then on the basis of e.g. the accurate count for "hello mum" and the accurate count for "mum's dolly", they use a statistical method to compute an estimated count for "hello dolly". So how accurate the count is depends roughly on whether they have made accurate counts of similar phrases, sort of...
Or of course, they may just use a different method entirely...
| | | | | Just be aware of this peculiar behavior in the future | Feb 26, 2010 |
I noticed this a while back. It's more of a bug than a feature, but what's important is being aware and not assuming too much!
Now I make sure to click through the first dozens of pages to see the accurate statistics. To speed this up, don't go through the results page by page - just click the 10th page, then the 29th, then the 38th, etc. until you reach the end. Most of the time it doesn't take too long. BTW, it works best with exact phrases or other narrow searches.
| | | | Claudio Brandt
United States
Local time: 12:16
English to Portuguese
+ ...
| Never assume Google results mean a phrase is widely used | Feb 26, 2010 |
Kate Chaffer wrote:
Although not a huge problem for me, it is misleading. I initially though that the phrase was very widely used.
Hi Kate,
Neil and others have already explained why Google do this trick of telling you first that a given word or phrase would generate thousands of results, only to subsequently narrow it down to a few.
But I'd add that one should never assume that a large number or results on a Google search means that the phrase is widely used.
Google has a search algorithm that they tweak and change all the time. That means a search you do today may be very different than the same search done two weeks from now (perhaps a little exaggeration here, but I hope you get my point).
Phrase searches (searches of a phrase within quotation marks) should yield only results with a perfect match, but often, after a few pages of perfect matches, they yield just keyword results (each word taken separately). That's the case with your own search, "the spine of the river". If you check the results after the 3rd page (in case you can see anything past the 3rd page, as I can), you will see that these pages show hundreds or results that won't contain the original phrase marked in bold. If you click these links, then do a Ctrl-F, you won't find the phrase you searched for.
Also, some of the results that Google consider a perfect match would be disregarded by us humans. For instance, Google ignores periods, commas and other punctuation marks within the phrase. So your search may result in something like: "...the spine. Of the river..." which obviously does not say anything about the correctness or usage of the phrase you originally searched for.
By all means, do use Google search to have an idea of what and how people are using expressions and phrases, but do not make conclusions bases on the number of results you get. Instead, rely on your own judgment based on results taken from good, reputable sources.
[Edited at 2010-02-26 16:10 GMT]
| | | | Kate Chaffer
Italy
Local time: 18:16
Member (2009)
Italian to English
TOPIC STARTER | Of course... | Feb 26, 2010 |
cbrandt wrote:
By all means, do use Google search to have an idea of what and how people are using expressions and phrases, but do not make conclusions bases on the number of results you get. Instead, rely on your own judgment based on results taken from good, reputable sources.
That goes without saying. It's like the Kudoz questions where people just post the link to Google to back up their answer! I always check out how the phrase is actually used, not just the quantity of hits.
Thanks to Neil and Mikhail for explaining it's basically something we just have to put up with!
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juvera
Local time: 17:16
English to Hungarian
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| The final " isn't important? | Feb 28, 2010 |
Of course it is important! Otherwise how would the search engine know what is the actual expression you are looking for? Is it "spine", or "spine of the" or spine of the river"?
When I put in "spine of the river", I also got 22 hits, and when I deleted the second " I got 564 000 or thereabout. Go figure.
As cbrand wrote, you might still find some results like "...the spine. Of the river...", nevertheless you get a reasonably good impression of the expression's popularity.
| | | | Kate Chaffer
Italy
Local time: 18:16
Member (2009)
Italian to English
TOPIC STARTER | juvera
Local time: 17:16
English to Hungarian
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| I can see now... | Mar 1, 2010 |
and it is curious, but when you check, you can see that the first two URLs are identical, so it seems it did not register the final ". Normally it does, like in your third attempt, and it makes all the difference.
__________________________________________________________________________
....It is even more curious than I thought, because when I copied the quote, it did not show the second " in the URL, and that's why I wrote the above comment, but when I posted it and had a look at the result, it was there. As I am writing this update, yet again I cannot see it, but I bet when I post it, it will be there again! Most peculiar.
[Edited at 2010-03-01 23:30 GMT]
Yep, it is coming and going like a yo-yo!
[Edited at 2010-03-01 23:32 GMT]
| | | | Polangmar
Poland
Local time: 18:16
English to Polish
+ ...
| General advice | Mar 2, 2010 |
The best setting is "Display 100 results per page." Then you always see the accurate number of results in the initial search if there are less than 100 of them - you only need to click on the last page if there are more than 100 hits (if you want to find the real number of results, of course).
Compare: http://tinyurl.com/y9bohla
PS "-proz" subtracts "self-results" (which distort the number) ... See more The best setting is "Display 100 results per page." Then you always see the accurate number of results in the initial search if there are less than 100 of them - you only need to click on the last page if there are more than 100 hits (if you want to find the real number of results, of course).
Compare: http://tinyurl.com/y9bohla
PS "-proz" subtracts "self-results" (which distort the number) - in this case there are 19 results outside proz.com. ▲ Collapse
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nevipaul
Local time: 19:16
Greek to English
To speed this up, don't go through the results page by page - just click the 10th page, then the 29th, then the 38th, etc. until you reach the end. Most of the time it doesn't take too long. BTW, it works best with exact phrases or other narrow searches.
To make this even quicker, after you click on the 10th page, go to the address bar, find the number "90", add a zero to make it "900" and if the number of hits is less than 900 you will be taken to the final page of the series and you can see the exact number of hits
| | | | | Weird indeed! | Mar 2, 2010 |
Why this is, I don't know either. But I've noticed another funny thing. When for Wikipedia the notability of a subject needs to be checked, for example by using Google, I've more than once stumbled upon this, for example:
Google for "keyword": 2100 hits
Google for "keyword" minus everything within the domain wikipedia.org: 5500 hits.
Curious indeed!
Jan
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