File size in Google serps

no size mentioned for pdf, docs, ps etc

[vitaplease]

Is there any reason Google does not show the file size in Serps for non regular documents such as pdf's, ps's, doc's etc?

It is not a size thing (>101 kb).

Could also be helpful before downloading on a call in line.

By the way, Alltheweb does show file sizes for pdf's. ;)

(sorry should have been posted in the Google news forum)

[ciml]

Good idea, but which would be better, the size of the HTML or the size of the PDF file?

[Macguru]

Good point vitaplease.

When it was discovered here that Goggle included .doc in it's index, the example was pointing to a laughable 1 meg SINGLE PAGE document.

ciml, I think Google should show the size of the non standard document, since the HTML version is rarely usable.

I believe googlebot is clueless about document size. Google's indexer does most parsing.

[ciml]

> ...since the HTML version is rarely usable

For those of us without broadband Internet access it's very handy. I tend to load the HTML version, check the context of the words I'm interested in, and then download the monster if I need to.

I agree though, the original size would be handy.

> I believe googlebot is clueless about document size

But it could log the content-length header and make that available in the SERPs.

[vitaplease]

Google should just give the size of the original pdf as they see it.

Never mind if they can rightly size up the size. They should just tell the surfer how big they think it is. With that the publisher of a document can at least know how much of that document has been indexed by Google.

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