{"id":145,"date":"2007-03-01T00:14:34","date_gmt":"2007-02-28T23:14:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/?p=145"},"modified":"2007-03-01T00:14:34","modified_gmt":"2007-02-28T23:14:34","slug":"google-cant-count","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/145-google-cant-count.html","title":{"rendered":"Google can’t count"},"content":{"rendered":"

CodeGear’s Anders Ohlsson is excited because Google shows over half a million<\/a> hits for “Delphi for PHP”. Even with the quotes.<\/p>\n

I get the same results. More, in fact. Google says 654,000 hits.<\/p>\n

Now try reading them. I get to page 35, then the hits come to a halt. There are 10 hits per page so that makes, hmmm, 350 hits. A bit less exciting. Let’s be honest, a lot less exciting. The real figure is probably a little higher, but not by half a million.<\/p>\n

I do get this line (we’ve all seen it before):<\/p>\n

\n

In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 341 already displayed. If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Trying the “complete” search does get more results, but they are just as repetitive as Google warns. Google appears to limit results to 1000 hits, so there is no obvious way to find out where the other alleged 653,000 hits can be found.<\/p>\n

Microsoft’s Live Search says 24,473 results, but the trail runs out on page 80. That’s 800. So Microsoft Live Search can’t count either.<\/p>\n

Yahoo says 322,000, but like Google can only show 1000 of them. I remain sceptical about the missing 321,000.<\/p>\n

I’ve noticed this before. Certain phrases trigger huge numbers of alleged hits, but they vanish if you try to view them. Others seem to work fine. Perhaps someone more knowledgeable about the inner workings of search engines can explain why. It appears to be an unreliable measure.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Technorati tags: google<\/a>, search<\/a>, delphi for php<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CodeGear’s Anders Ohlsson is excited because Google shows over half a million hits for “Delphi for PHP”. Even with the quotes. I get the same results. More, in fact. Google says 654,000 hits. Now try reading them. I get to page 35, then the hits come to a halt. There are 10 hits per page … Continue reading Google can’t count<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,24,44,74],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-borland","category-delphi","category-internet","category-search"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}