User:NatGertler/GoogleCount

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Despite the concerns expressed in WP:GHITS, there are occasions when expressing the quantity of Google results may be of value (for example, comparing the frequency of use of different spellings to find a preferred one.) However, one must view with suspicion Google's initial announcement of how many matches it finds. It is frequently exaggerated, sometimes overstating actual results by literally thousandfolds (although paging will generally stop you at 1000 results anyway.) Part of that is due simply to Google coming to the same page in differing ways, which it admits to with "In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 617 already displayed."

Before citing some large Google result, please seek the final reachable page of Google results.