tedster - 11:55 pm on Oct 10, 2007 (gmt 0)

gehrlekrona, you're describing something different from what JS_Harris posted. You are talking about the way the number gets refined as you click deeper into the search results for one given search. The change JS_Harris describes is seeing the number change dramatically from day to day. 19 million to 48 million is pretty wild.

Watching these numbers doesn't do much to give you some immediate take-away you can apply to your site. But it is an indicator that some major shuffling is going on behind the scenes at Google, more than usual, I'd say. Also, for anyone planning a new site and trying to get a handle on how much compteition they;ve got for various searches, this kind of volatility makes it almost impossible to make decisions. However, I doubt that this is more than a short term oddity.