Search results limit

serps, limit, maximum, results

[pindi2000]

Why does Google only display the top 900 or so links in its SERPS? Is there a way to go beyond, and see the rest of the, for exmaple, 9'000 pages?

I would like to go beyond this limit and see the rest of the results pages!

[tedster]

No, there's no way for the public to get that data. I'm pretty sure the reason is to limit reverse-engineering attempts on their algo. If they make too much data publicly available, then it becomes easier to test this and that factor and get closer to the recipe for their secret sauce.

[Lord Majestic]

I'm pretty sure the reason is to limit reverse-engineering attempts on their algo.

The reason is increased complexity and cost of query - the more top results are accumulated the more sorting needs to be done on the fly - this is costly CPU wise.

Additionally knowing in advance that more than 1000 results can't be checked allows to perform additional optimisations.