Why do Google search results vary so hugely?

[jendoe]

Does anyone know? Am I missing something?

I have a keyword phrase that I wanted to rank for. I Googled it, and got around 500,000 results. For about a week, I kept checking it, and the number varied from around 350,000 to 600,000. I can accept that, in my mind that's in the ballpark.

A couple weeks later, and there are now 2 million results for that phrase! Same exact phrase, same type of search (no quotes).

Why does this happen? I have trouble believing that... in the last two weeks the number of sites targeting this phrase suddenly quadrupled.... in 2 weeks? No way

Does anyone know? Or is it part of the mystery of Google?

Thanks,
-Jen

[George Wright]

Google has different servers that return different results. Sometimes you hit one server sometimes you hit another server. I don't know what this means I'm just repeating the answer I got when I asked the same question.

George Wright EDIT: Instead of saying I don't know what this means I should say I don't know why this happens.

[jendoe]

Hi George...

Thanks... but doesn't that still sound *weird* to you? I mean, as a search engine, it's not in Google's best interest (I would think) to just forget about 75% of the "hits" - (i.e. 500k versus 2million) - that would make it a really rotten search engine! It seems like you'd have a huge probability that really valuable content may not even show up in the results...

Hmmm it's just such an odd-looking thing to me... ! (Plus it makes it hard to trust the research, when you never know what's going to change in a few weeks!)

-Jen

[idevelop]

Yes I also find it a little confusing... Also in how you rank depends on the country IP I think... Im based in Thailand and when I search my site from here on google, Im no.1, but if I surf via proxy on the US site, Im No. 51.. If I then search on google.co.uk or .de etc Im back at No.1 most of the time...

I guess the question is: How can a person SEO for a particular country?

[Matt Maiden]

Well, we do know that they wouldn't deliberately try to conceal information that could help their competitors learn more about their data gathering in relation to their advertising structure.

So, it must be a glitch somewhere.

[jendoe]

Interesting about the countries... I'm in the US, and haven't tried any searches outside of US-space, so haven't really seen that before...

LOL Matt, that's funny. Yeah, yeah, I know... *but*... I'm assuming they primarily want to be really really good at giving search results. They don't know that I'm a crazed wannabe IM-er obsessively checking my keyword phrase (I'm not logged into Google, and I have a dynamic IP for my computer, so it tends to change daily.)

If all those other pages were relevant, wouldn't they be failing at their primary job of providing great search results by not showing them to me (which tonight, they didn't - the keyword is back down to 600k!)

Alternatively, maybe those other 1.5million are just... fillers? Maybe Google knows they're no good and also knows that, honestly, who's going to look past the first half a million!

It just bugs me! I feel like I can research keywords til I go crazy, but in the end, none of it really matters since it could be drastically different tomorrow, depending on google's whimsy that day. *Argh!*

-jen

[dburk]

Hi Jen,

The number of Results refers to pages not sites. It's a rough estimate that's why is says "Results 1 - 10 of about 6,970,000 for keyword". The number of pages can fluctuate a great deal due to whole entire sites dropping out of the index and being added back. Results vary from one datacenter to another and data refreshes are performed on a periodic bases.

One thing you might want to be aware of is that no matter how many pages appear in the "about xxx,xxx for", the actual number of results listed in their index is limited to no more than 1000 per query.

[TomBond]

Originally Posted by idevelop

Yes I also find it a little confusing... Also in how you rank depends on the country IP I think... Im based in Thailand and when I search my site from here on google, Im no.1, but if I surf via proxy on the US site, Im No. 51.. If I then search on google.co.uk or .de etc Im back at No.1 most of the time...

I guess the question is: How can a person SEO for a particular country?

Google now displays search results based on you previous browsing history. So if you often click on your own site through natural search results, Google will rank you higher when you search as it wants to display results that are most relevant for you. It tracks you through your Google account.

If you make sure you sign out I'm pretty sure you won't be number one.

The important lesson from all that is rankings can only be used as a rough guide, it's traffic that really matters.

[leukram]

generally , except breaking news become people's topic
these kinds of serach results won't happen normally
jsut like Geoger said different servers that return different results.
so make sure the consistence of your search

[geargish]

Originally Posted by distinctly_digital

Google now displays search results based on you previous browsing history. So if you often click on your own site through natural search results, Google will rank you higher when you search as it wants to display results that are most relevant for you. It tracks you through your Google account.

If you make sure you sign out I'm pretty sure you won't be number one.

The important lesson from all that is rankings can only be used as a rough guide, it's traffic that really matters.

Very interesting.
I am gonna investigate this thanks.