On 2/9/07, David Ashby humble.fool@gmail.com wrote:
Posing the question to a guy I know who works at Google received this response:
The count of results is just an approximation; it's not the actual count.
So I assume that he means it's figured on the fly, and is subject to random variation? Just proves you can't put any real stock in the number returned.
Well, that doesn't explain why the number randomly oscillates between precisely two numbers, with a different layout of the results on the screen. I actually suspect that what's happening is the "discard similar results" option is generating the smaller number with indenting, and that option is being set or not set randomly. Using a less popular query and specifically choosing to discard similar results gives a stable number.
Whether the bug is in how firefox interacts with google, or how google interacts with firefox is unclear.
I would also be curious to know if Google has any kind of confidence parameters on those estimates. Can one say for example that if query Q returns "approximately" 1,000,000 results and P returns "approximately" 1,500,000 results - then are there definitely more real results for P than Q?
Steve
Steve