Why on the first page Google says there are thousands of results but on the last page there are less than a hundred?

Question

Why on the first page Google says there are thousands of results but on the last page there are less than a hundred?

That's kind of a recursive Google Search that should be self-explanatory. It did take me some time to tweak the sentence and trying to find a number which would correspond precisely, the reason why I changed it to "hundreds" instead! :P

If you have used Google long enough you certainly have stumbled on situations similar to this, many times. Whenever it shows less than 10 pages it's quite easy to see it. The point is: the number of results on any page except the last one seems like a terrible estimate.

What's even weirder, some random times the estimate suddenly becomes much better and almost exactly the same on all pages than it is on the last page - the only page that's always correct.

So, anyone knows why?

Answer 1

I don't know the exact answer - perhaps no one outside of Google knows. But I have two data points which may be useful.

The first is XKCD's take on the issue:

So it really looks like there’s a certain threshold of result volume beyond which Google apparently says “screw it” and throws out a gigantic number. I imagine this is probably due to incompetence rather than intentional deception; I’m sure it’s hard to generate pages quickly from many sources, and maybe for searches with a lot of results they don’t have time to get it all synced up. So they fudge the numbers. The fact that this makes it look like they have way more results than they do is presumably just an unintended bonus.

The second data point is from a computer science professor I had who was quite curious about the issue and bothered some friends at Google about it. They told him that sometimes it becomes very expensive to figure out how many results were really returned from a search, so they just make a best guess and return the first page of results, which is all most people care about. Only when you actually start drilling down through the pages does Google bother to fully calculate the remaining pages.

So neither of these is a definitive answer, but hopefully they will be useful at explaining the kinds of issues that may be causing Google's inaccuracies.

EDIT:

Sathya's answer on this page has an answer from Google's Webmaster KB.

When you perform a search, the results are often displayed with the information: Results 1 - 10 of about XXXX.

Google's calculation of the total number of search results is an estimate. We understand that a ballpark figure is valuable, and by providing an estimate rather than an exact account, we can return quality search results faster.

In addition, when you click on the next page of search results, the total number of search results can change. In this case, we realize that some of the query results are duplicates, and collapse those duplicates so that you can find the specific result you're looking for more easily. Collapsing the duplicates decreases the estimated number of results, as well as the overall number of results pages.

Answer 2

No - the number is just an approximation.

When you perform a search, the results are often displayed with the information: Results 1 - 10 of about XXXX.

Google's calculation of the total number of search results is an estimate. We understand that a ballpark figure is valuable, and by providing an estimate rather than an exact account, we can return quality search results faster.

In addition, when you click on the next page of search results, the total number of search results can change. In this case, we realize that some of the query results are duplicates, and collapse those duplicates so that you can find the specific result you're looking for more easily. Collapsing the duplicates decreases the estimated number of results, as well as the overall number of results pages.

Answer 3

None of the answers above are correct.

Google's estimate must be closer to the real number of results than what is given.

This can be shown by a simple example. Pick a somewhat frequent word like "Russia" or "michael". In truth there must be thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of websites on the internet that contain those words someplace on their site. But Google results might only give you, say, 700.

The truth is not that Google gives vast overestimates, but that now Google vastly limits the number of results that it will give you. It abridges the results severely, to our major detriment as individuals. It is unfortunate because I do want to read the thousands of sites with my terms in some cases.

I know this because I have used Google for a long time, perhaps 10-15 years and have noticed that as a general rule, the results for terms have gotten shorter, not longer, even though the number of sites with the same terms generally must have increased in the time that I have been using Google.

Whereas in the past, years ago I could get perhaps 1000 results for some terms, now I am getting 500 results for the same terms that I would have gotten 1000 results for.

Answer 4

Google result counts are a meaningless metric. Aside from the collapsing of duplicates, you also have stemming, the way that the counts are calculated in the first place by multiplying frequencies, and the fact that Google imposes a cap that sets the maximum number of results that will ever be returned.

Answer 5

The issues with Google (Image) Search engine is that it aims for relevance by dropping variance. Firstly, it's important to understand how it works. An image uploaded to the internet needs to be indexed in two ways:

• based on originality (image gets to be analyzed by a "smart bot" based on color, size, patterns, shape recognition, type, etc.)
• based on similarity (image gets to be analyzed by a "smart bot2" and cross-referenced with already existing images in a database and further tagged with one or two category labels: "image is match" and "image is similar to...")

After indexing is done, the image will inherit "keywords" as a result of recognition to avoid showing off-topic results to enduser. The thing is that each keyword is a standalone phrase with assigned value in % based on the strength of relevance (that's why grouping more words in search box results in fewer results and also when you search for an image by uploading it or entering URL, Google will assign a "guess" with only top keywords, which means that the search will never show you all pictures simply because the search is not designed to do so)

So at the end of a day when you perform an image search and right under the search box, you will see a tremendous number saying "25,270,000,000 results (0.55 seconds)" its mostly always kind of a fake number, because you will get no more than 200 (max 500 but only after user requests it) results which are also filtered to exclude:

• external duplicates (if the same image is 2+ times on the same site page)
• relevance duplicates (shows only "best results" - see image below)
• images that have issues with the law (see image below)
• images that violate DMCA (see image below)
• images that originate from SPAM, MALWARE, PHISHING sources
• images that are hidden (if a user didn't disable Safe Search)
• images that are blacklisted by Google (article)
• images with different AR (basically all images that have a different aspect ratio than the image search reference. eg. you can miss all desired results if you search by your chosen image - let's say with weird ratio 9:7 - while all images indexed in Google are with ratio 3:4 - which is maybe the biggest downside of this search engine because it always obeys Aspect Ratio as the first criterion)
• and a bunch of more

To summarize it: search results of an image are never full-relevant. Sometimes you will get your final desired result with a search phrase "gate poster" otherwise it could be "gate cover", "gate bluray", "gate dvd", "gate 2015" or even "自衛隊 彼の地にて 斯く戦えり" - you just can't have "ALL" image results, because there isn't anything that is "ALL", that's why there is a need to play with it to get there. And also is relevant to mention, that there are other image search engines that can do the job a way more differently, because they work on different standards and criterions. It isn't and never been "Google"-only... >> https://www.yandex.com/images/

notable extensions:

• https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/phototracker-lite/
• https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/image-search-for-yandex/

Answer 6

At the top it says page 70 out of 7000 results (example). It will give the page number and how many results. There aren't 70 results, but 70 pages. Hope this helps.

Answer 7

The idea - that it is too expensive for Google to present an accurate accounting of the number of search results on every page except the last one - is ridiculous on its face.

The idea that they are being lazy on the first several pages but then only on the last one give you the real number of search results, that doesn't make any sense. How would it know what the last page was? The answer is that they do know. This is not hard.

The amount of resources available to Google is simply mind-boggling, so any suggestion that they don't know what is going on with every pixel of their search results page is just as mind-boggling. Of course they know what is going on.

Google's search results are fantastic, because how often do you need to go past the first page to get what you were looking for? Almost never. Which is incredible when you think about it. It is a very useful service.

But the misleading number of results it presents on each page except for the last one is deliberate and underhanded. The sole purpose is to make it seem like Google has a huge database of information that it is willing to rank and then share - in the form of links - with the user. Most people fall for it because they don't get past the first several pages of results.

The truth is that Google does have a huge database of information, but they're only willing to share a small part of that. So you get the impression that they have hundreds of thousands or millions of results to present to you, even though they absolutely do not. They might catalog all that, but it's not for you.

It is intentional and deceptive, and it's not hard to understand.