Search for Yahoo on Google. Get 38 results. Huh?
Danny is checking on it….
He asks the right question: Filter, bug, or feature? The answer will be interesting in terms of how Google is starting to tweak its approach to SERPs.
FWIW, “Google” on Yahoo (55 million or so results).
UPDATE: I have it on very good authority that Google is fiddling with its “results crowding” algorithms, and not targeting Yahoo or filtering in any way.
YAHOO on GOOGLE give me 179,000,000 … HUH?
Sorry, should have noted – they only show a fraction of that….
I get “about 278 million”. What are you on about?
He means you only get to see the first 38 or so results (try using the navigation at the bottom of the page), after that you get the “excluding duplicates” message. This seems frankly astonishing that only 38 results would be shown for the query by default!
It’s down to 34 at this moment….
If you look closely at the fence on the grassy knoll, you’ll see a puff of smoke!
That is BS. My result searching Google for Yahoo was: Results 1 – 10 of about 278,000,000 for yahoo [definition]. (0.21 seconds)
Mr Steinberg, you are missing what is happening. On the original query, it will say there are several million. However, once one gets past the fourth page of results this what is displayed…
“In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 35 already displayed.
If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included.”
I tired the terms Microsoft, eBay and Amazon (among others) and didn’t get a similar results as with Yahoo.
Over at SEW forums someone from Google is saying it’s related to how they do the result crowding though I’m not finding it with any other term.
At the end, it says:
In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 36 already displayed. If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included.
I frequently see that message. Click the link to redo the search and I see tons of links.
Thanks for producing such a great blog in 2004.
I look forward to your offerings in 2005.
Regards
Ed Keay-Smith
AdWords Marketing, The Google AdWords Pay-Per-Click Campaign Management Specialists.
I’m getting to page 5 with 43 results before the “for more results…” mssg shows up. Is it showing more since more people seem to click beyond the initial few pages (adapting?).
My guess is that its a bug. Since pages 3 – 4 are all foreign character sets I believe Google’s indexer is considering them the same content from different urls and not showing the rest of the listings. I think its more of a shame on Yahoo for not making their search engine search engine friendly 🙂
I get these results
Results 1 – 10 of about 276,000,000 for yahoo [definition]. (0.31 seconds)
and have managed to get to page 6
An interesting find. I found a couple other bugs in Google too just the other day, both of which I’ve documented in my blog. See “Google bug reveals favored web sites.”