Google search results changing with page #?
What do you make of the following google search results changing with page number ? Note the result page and the total number of pages shown below ... Why does it change with every page ? and that too so drastically ? going up and down !!
If you know the answer, please let me know ! Of course, there is some dynamic decision making going on in there - but whats it ? and are we sure that the 5th page (link to thre 5th page) mentioned on page 1 is the same page as the 5th page link mentioned on page 4 ?
btw, If I click on page 10 link on page 1 - I get the 5th page only !! so I think this is a bug ... Known or unknown thats the issue :) ...
Update : I dont see this behaviour on the www.live.com (Microsoft's online search engine). It shows you the exact same pages all the time !
Labels: daily life, general, Thought provoking
posted by Aniruddhaat 4/05/2007 01:01:00 AM
6 Comments:
hmm..good observation..I think what might be happening is it shows links to 10 pages worth of results initially because it determines that there are about 188 to 189 webpages found as of today (NOTE: webpages, not websites). Then as you start navigating from page 1 to page 2 and so on, it calculates dynamically how many "unique" results (dissimilar webpages) to show and hence on the last page, you will see this text:
"In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 46 already displayed. If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included."
So it found out that 142 results are similar to each other (similar probably in the URL, proximity etc.) and need not be shown, unless explicitly asked for. If you click on that above text, Google performs the entire search again, but this time with all similar pages displayed (as is evident from the URL itself, which has "filter=0" appended at the end). Now you will see all 19 pages of Google results ie. from 1 to 188 or 189. And if you look at any of the results pages, you will see how you get to see all similar pages listed too. That still doesnt explain why Google cant do this when you searched the first time. I think it might be a tradeoff between the time it takes to deliver the results to you (it will take more time to do that computation) and the precentage chance that you probably found what you wanted in the top 10 results and there was no need to go to next pages. And Google probably opted for the former factor as higher priority.
Hi Mitesh,
I agree that it might be doing some kind of unique page search but then if you see, when I moved from page 1 to page 2, the results have increased from 10 pages to 11 pages !! How does it fit in the above theory ?
Ani.
Bug or not, it definitely is not a good user experience !!
Ok. Here it is - it truncates the results based on the already seen results (assumption) and hence the number of pages goes down. At a time, it shows a maximum of 10 pages and hence when you go to page 2, it adds page 11 (if available) which in this case is available. So, its a little more intelligent algorithm which tries to give you the non-similar results on every page.
Now, we can debate over this is good or bad. But this certainly is bad user experience. Pages suddenly disappearing after clicking. Does not give a very 'reliable' feeling ...
And I see that you are running searches on your name!!
:)yep- egosurfing is my favorite tp ...
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