Google, any idea already?

March 5th, 2008 Posted in UseShots Samples

I constantly use Google as a translation tool when writing something in English. If I’m not sure I’m using some word or phrase correcly, I type it in quotes in the Google toolbar and check the search results, which usually help me identify the most appropriate usage.

Unmatching result estimates and pagination

This time I checked the “any idea already” word combination and was very surprised with the results page (larger picture)

2,700 results. 10 results per page. How many pages?

Google’s estimates on total results count have never been very accurate and they never show more than 1,000 results for any search, but you don’t usually question their trustworthiness.

4 pages. Surprise!

How come they have only 4 pages for 2,700 results?

Page #3 is the last page

And it looks like the page number estimate is more accurate than the one at the top of the page. I can browse no further than page #3.

It looks like Google has reached the size of Microsoft, and have different teams working on different parts of the search result pages. They should definitely have the “top-of-the-SERP-estimates team” use the same database as the “pagination team”. ;-)

I still don’t know if I can use the word combination. Google, any idea already? ;-)

P.S. This is a sample article created using UseShots Editor

Did you enjoy this post? Why not leave a comment below and continue the conversation, or subscribe to my feed and get articles like this delivered automatically to your feed reader.

Tags: google, sample