5 ms·

600613

65 points by krg 12y ago

IvyMike 12y ago
> Most numbers of this magnitude garner a few thousand hits on Google, but 25898913 gets 29,500,000. If you actually click through the results, on pages 1-34 you get "Page 34 of about 24,900,000 results (0.34 seconds) ", but on page 35 you discover that there are only actually 341 results.
- FreeFull 12y ago
  Sounds like an odd bug in how Google works.
- ajani 12y ago
  I've found this to be consistent behaviour with Google. The number of search results tend to be totally unreliable. I don't know if they use the same search algorithm for gmail, but the same problem occurs there as well. Initially it might say 1-50 of 100 results, go to the second page and suddenly it's 50-100 of 2000. And on the next page 100-150 of "many". Google search-hit count has never been fully accurate - I say this empirically from use over the years, and having tried to use the number of hits in some random experiment I can no longer remember.
  - vtlynch 12y ago
    Google acknowledges this: https://support.google.com/gsa/answer/2672285?hl=en https://support.google.com/gsa/answer/2672285?hl=en I remember seeing a more in depth article about this but cant find it at the moment.
    - Chinjut 12y ago
      So apparently it is possible to get an accurate result count (for up to 1 million results) using "rc = 1"? Does anyone have an examples illustrating this behavior (I can't seem to contrive one where it makes a difference)?
      - ajani 12y ago
        I suspect rc=1 applies to enterprise search.
        Chinjut 12y ago
        Ah, that makes sense. Thanks!
- arikrak 12y ago
  It's a bit ridiculous how Google shows those numbers on top and people constantly quote there are X results for Y when the real results are always far off from that. There are 382,000 results for {number of "google results"}!
bowmessage 12y ago
In response to the trivia question: I'm assuming that it's impossible to find some N wit fewer than 10 digits. In all of my attempts I've received results relating to phone number reverse-lookup sites. There also seems to be this website which exists just to generate a page full of numbers with any given prefix (defined in the URL): http://www.qzonecom.com/mobile/maanshan_511556.html http://www.qzonecom.com/mobile/maanshan_511556.html Why?!
- sssss3333 12y ago
  That's my favorite thing about the internet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cghg-QyTP_M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cghg-QyTP_M No reason
guidopallemans 12y ago
website is under a heavy load, here is the cached version: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:MvuGGDFhj4MJ:bit-player.org/2014/600613+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=be http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:MvuGGDF...
pavel_lishin 12y ago
10,041,295,923 now returns exactly one result - the author's page, just as he theorized. I wonder if it'll return two results soon.
- ikeboy 12y ago
  https://archive.today/j8KXp https://archive.today/j8KXp Now it does!
malkia 12y ago
A new type of business: find a number that's not yet in google/bing/etc. - embded it in your text, and then track who's copied you verbatim - some kind of tracking I guess..
vitd 12y ago
It would be nice to change the title to something coherent and useful, like, "Search queries containing only numbers," or something of that sort. As such, there's not a lot of incentive to click on "600613". (Yeah, I did it, mostly just to make this post coherent.)
- vog 12y ago
  Well, I was expecting something about the "Google projection" for maps, unofficially noted as the slightly different EPSG:900913 [1] until finally standardized as EPSG:3857 [2]. [1] http://crschmidt.net/blog/archives/243/google-projection-900913/ http://crschmidt.net/blog/archives/243/google-projection-900... [2] http://www.epsg-registry.org/report.htm?type=selection&entity=urn:ogc:def:crs:EPSG::3857&reportDetail=short&style=urn:uuid:report-style:default-with-code&style_name=OGP%20Default%20With%20Code&title=EPSG:3857 http://www.epsg-registry.org/report.htm?type=selection&entit...
moonfern 12y ago
The about "number" results should give an idea but it might not be accurate, tells google. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ix3mHeL7hg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ix3mHeL7hg Anyway you only get the first 1000 results of your googling.
alex_duf 12y ago
I think it's a matter of scale. The scale of the human race gives us a range of number that are humanly comprehensible. Their distribution diminishes as they make less and less sense to our scale.
ozh 12y ago
That is pretty much the kind of posts I come to HN for. Thanks for the read :)

65 points by krg 12y ago

> Most numbers of this magnitude garner a few thousand hits on Google, but 25898913 gets 29,500,000. If you actually click through the results, on pages 1-34 you get "Page 34 of about 24,900,000 results (0.34 seconds) ", but on page 35 you discover that there are only actually 341 results.

FreeFull 12y ago
Sounds like an odd bug in how Google works.
ajani 12y ago
I've found this to be consistent behaviour with Google. The number of search results tend to be totally unreliable. I don't know if they use the same search algorithm for gmail, but the same problem occurs there as well. Initially it might say 1-50 of 100 results, go to the second page and suddenly it's 50-100 of 2000. And on the next page 100-150 of "many". Google search-hit count has never been fully accurate - I say this empirically from use over the years, and having tried to use the number of hits in some random experiment I can no longer remember.
- vtlynch 12y ago
  Google acknowledges this: https://support.google.com/gsa/answer/2672285?hl=en https://support.google.com/gsa/answer/2672285?hl=en I remember seeing a more in depth article about this but cant find it at the moment.
  - Chinjut 12y ago
    So apparently it is possible to get an accurate result count (for up to 1 million results) using "rc = 1"? Does anyone have an examples illustrating this behavior (I can't seem to contrive one where it makes a difference)?
    - ajani 12y ago
      I suspect rc=1 applies to enterprise search.
      - Chinjut 12y ago
        Ah, that makes sense. Thanks!
arikrak 12y ago
It's a bit ridiculous how Google shows those numbers on top and people constantly quote there are X results for Y when the real results are always far off from that. There are 382,000 results for {number of "google results"}!

bowmessage 12y ago

In response to the trivia question: I'm assuming that it's impossible to find some N wit fewer than 10 digits. In all of my attempts I've received results relating to phone number reverse-lookup sites. There also seems to be this website which exists just to generate a page full of numbers with any given prefix (defined in the URL): http://www.qzonecom.com/mobile/maanshan_511556.html http://www.qzonecom.com/mobile/maanshan_511556.html Why?!

sssss3333 12y ago
That's my favorite thing about the internet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cghg-QyTP_M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cghg-QyTP_M No reason

guidopallemans 12y ago

website is under a heavy load, here is the cached version: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:MvuGGDFhj4MJ:bit-player.org/2014/600613+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=be http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:MvuGGDF...

pavel_lishin 12y ago

10,041,295,923 now returns exactly one result - the author's page, just as he theorized. I wonder if it'll return two results soon.

ikeboy 12y ago
https://archive.today/j8KXp https://archive.today/j8KXp Now it does!

malkia 12y ago

A new type of business: find a number that's not yet in google/bing/etc. - embded it in your text, and then track who's copied you verbatim - some kind of tracking I guess..

vitd 12y ago

It would be nice to change the title to something coherent and useful, like, "Search queries containing only numbers," or something of that sort. As such, there's not a lot of incentive to click on "600613". (Yeah, I did it, mostly just to make this post coherent.)

vog 12y ago
Well, I was expecting something about the "Google projection" for maps, unofficially noted as the slightly different EPSG:900913 [1] until finally standardized as EPSG:3857 [2]. [1] http://crschmidt.net/blog/archives/243/google-projection-900913/ http://crschmidt.net/blog/archives/243/google-projection-900... [2] http://www.epsg-registry.org/report.htm?type=selection&entity=urn:ogc:def:crs:EPSG::3857&reportDetail=short&style=urn:uuid:report-style:default-with-code&style_name=OGP%20Default%20With%20Code&title=EPSG:3857 http://www.epsg-registry.org/report.htm?type=selection&entit...

moonfern 12y ago

The about "number" results should give an idea but it might not be accurate, tells google. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ix3mHeL7hg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ix3mHeL7hg Anyway you only get the first 1000 results of your googling.

alex_duf 12y ago

I think it's a matter of scale. The scale of the human race gives us a range of number that are humanly comprehensible. Their distribution diminishes as they make less and less sense to our scale.

ozh 12y ago

That is pretty much the kind of posts I come to HN for. Thanks for the read :)