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You know the results bar at Google? The one that says, Results 1 - 10 of about X for keyword? It looks like this:
Well, it is never much all that accurate. Some novice searchers look at that to compare how popular topic A is to topic B, but that really doesn't make much sense. In addition, it is often fairly buggy.
For example, a WebmasterWorld thread has some webmasters noticing the bar read, "Results 1-18 of about 13 results" or something like that.
You got that? 1 - 18, first of all, Google shows max 10 by default. And of 13, but showing 1-18? Doesn't make much sense.
This is not surprising to many of us. I typically ignore that bar anyway, and you should likely ignore it too, or at least, take it for what it is worth.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
Comments:
Peter
11/12/2008 07:44 pm
Some people tend to use those figures to try to persuade others that their domains are worth a lot as well. Never makes much sense.
Adam Snider
11/14/2008 06:45 pm
While I sometimes use that information just to get a quick estimate of how popular a domain or topic is, I agree that it's not a good idea to rely on it. While I've never seen an error as egregious as the one you pointed out, I've seen others that show just how inaccurate the results bar can sometimes be.