[Web4lib] Google search results question

[Sloan, Bernie]

Here's how I stumbled across it...

In the second example I originally gave (searching for "ask a
librarian") I was trying to get a handle for how many virtual reference
services might be out there. So I decided to try several searches, and
"ask a librarian" was my first search. I found out the number of
services calling themselves "ask a librarian" was somewhere between 965
and 5,850,000. Not quite precise enough for my purposes! :-)

By the way, the number of results for the "ask a librarian" search has
increased by 160,000 since yesterday.

-----Original Message-----
From: Drew, Bill [mailto:drewwe at MORRISVILLE.EDU] 
Sent: Wednesday, July 06, 2005 9:02 AM
To: Jeremy Dunck; Felicia Mehl
Cc: Sloan, Bernie; web4lib at webjunction.org
Subject: RE: [Web4lib] Google search results question

Dumb question, but why does it matter if the numbers are accurate or
not?  Are you doing statistical studies?  What matters is the results
not the counts.

Bill Drew
drewwe at morrisville.edu