[Web4lib] Google limit of 1,000 results

[Karen Harker]

I came across this obstacle when I was doing my MLS research paper. I was evaluating the content of academic medical library Web sites using multidimensional scaling of links.  As part of that research, I needed to download all search results from site searches based on domains. For some institutions, I was not able to get all results.  I contacted Google to see if there was some way to do this, but I got the same response, almost verbatim.  

Of course, if I was a tenured faculty at a major university, I might have been able to work directly with Google to get complete results, but I was just a grad student trying to scrape together a decent paper.  I listed this constraint as a limitation of my research.



Karen R. Harker, MLS
UT Southwestern Medical Library
5323 Harry Hines Blvd.
Dallas, TX  75390-9049
214-648-8946
http://www.utsouthwestern.edu/library/

>>> "Sloan, Bernie" <bernies at uillinois.edu> 7/8/2005 11:08:44 AM >>>
Here's what I heard back from Google regarding the limit on results
returned:

"Google provides only the 1000 most relevant search results for a query,
even when there are more than 1000 matches.

(Due to variations in our estimates of results, we may occasionally
display slightly fewer than 1000.) We try to make your search experience
so efficient that it's not necessary to scroll past the first ten
listings. We understand that some individuals would like to see more
than 1000 results, but this isn't common, and it would heavily tax our
system to provide these results for everyone." 

Since other search engines also seem to limit the number of results
returned, I don't think of it as a Google-specific problem. Would be
nice if there was an option to go beyond 1,000 results, for those crazy
few of us who sometimes search that far! :-)

Bernie Sloan
Senior Information Systems Consultant
Consortium of Academic & Research Libraries in Illinois
616 E. Green Street, Suite 213
Champaign, IL  61820-5752

Phone: (217) 333-4895
Fax:   (217) 265-0454
E-mail: bernies at uillinois.edu 


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