Today, I was wondering why people don’t go beyond initial 2-3 pages of their search. Maybe, it is the interface of the search engines which promotes such behavior or maybe people really don’t care to go beyond initial pages.
Whatever be the case. I decided to make a tool which will serve LAST page of Google’s search results. The idea was to grab the total number of search results from Google (for example, it is 91,300,000 for the term AJAX), divide the number by 10 and then modify the Google’s search URL accordingly (for example, for 2nd search page the URL is: http://www.google.com/search?q=ajax&start=10). So, my hypothesis was that the URL for last page for AJAX results would be http://www.google.com/search?q=ajax&start=9130000.
Well, try going to that URL. You will be in for a surprise. Google, in small-greyish-dull-looking-font, says “Sorry, Google does not serve more than 1000 results for any query. (You asked for results starting from 9130000.)“.
Did I commit a crime for asking results starting from 9130000? If Google claims to have found so many results, why doesn’t it shows so many results? What is the use of saying “Results 1 – 10 of about 91,300,000 for ajax. (0.10 seconds)” if I can’t go beyond 1000 results?
Frustrating!
Edit: I have realized that dividing the search results number by 10 is a wrong way to get the last page. How could I have been so dumb? Maybe it was the frustration. 🙂
Whatever it was but you are right. I always find it frustrating. For example try searching your name. Then look at the initial claim of the number of results found, keep moving over to the last search result page available. When you reach the last page you’ll see it is almost 20-30 times less.
hi,
fist of all, 99% of times anyone will get info with 100 page of result. if any body doesnot satisfies the result then only go further to pages. literally, if we didnot get within 100 pages, it will be sure that you will not get results beyond 100 also.