how many is many?

[lucy24]

Today I Learned ... that G###'s definition of “not many” may be different from yours and mine.

I was looking up a phrase I found quoted in an old book in order to find the locus classicus. G said
(a) “19,300 results” of which they deigned to show me 21, with no “more” or “next page” option,
and
(b) “It looks like there aren't many great matches for your search”, with no option for “That’s OK, show me some of the not-so-great results”.

Past experience suggests that some or all of the other 19,279 results are somewhere in Google Books.

Grumble.

[phranque]

sometimes you can find more indexed urls by using search operators such as site: and inurl:

[lucy24]

I wasn’t, alas, looking for a known URL. I was looking for literal text. But following up on the suggestion, I constrained the search to “books”, which got me back to 1817. (The previous earliest was 1830, which I didn't believe.) And it’s still in quotation marks, meaning the locus classicus has to be earlier.

:: search, search ::

With some further search constraints, I've got it back to 1795 and a book available at both Hathi and TIA. With round s, at that. (Google Books--unlike TIA--is surprisingly good at reading long s, but it's easier when they don't have to. Besides, I rather despise them.)

I don't suppose G### will ever explain why 19,300 counts as “not many”, or why they think I require “great” results.

[engine]

I don't suppose G### will ever explain why 19,300 counts as “not many”, or why they think I require “great” results.

Been there, done that. G's search has been broken for some time, imho, especially when you're looking to dig for some detail.

I've always found some of the basics seem skewed when an initial search brings 6-pages of serps, and when you reach the second page, suddenly, there are no pages 4, 5, and 6. Weird, eh.

It seems to rely on the fact that you'll find what you want in the first few results.

Researching with G has become a lottery, again, imho.

[Jonesy]

I recently dug up some pertinent content via DDG that Goggle never shared with me.
Granted, most of it was buried in books copied into PDFs in a not-so-professional way.
Even the browser's [FIND] operation couldn't locate some of the text in those hits -- but
they were there after trawling through the text. Gives me pause, it does. :-)

[Kendo]

Been there, done that. G's search has been broken for some time, imho, especially when you're looking to dig for some detail.

Preference given to pet sites and "close proximity matches" can foil most attempts at finding anything specific. "Close proximity" also means more ads are shown and more clients get billed for ads that are useless cases.

I am finding that by using more words in the search string I am actually reducing the chance of finding what I am looking for.

The law of diminishing returns... something so over developed that it has become useless, like so many things today.