Google fudge index size figures?

Danny Sullivan posts that Google are looking to increase the size of their index.

However, the practical result seems to be that Google have simply doubled the number of pages they claim indexed from any domain.

Conversely, Google now return *fewer* results for major keywords.

For example, back in December 2004 we saw Google reduce the number of results reurned for a query. Google engineer and unofficial public relations spokesman, Matt Cutts a.k.a Googleguy, put it down to using a filter to reduce “results crowding”.

I conducted a quick study of high frequency keywords at the beginning of January this year and came up with the following results:

Results 901 - 902 of about 100,000,000 for casino
Results 801 - 851 of about 96,000,000 for porn
Results 801 - 900 of about 616,000,000 for internet
Results 901 - 911 of about 1,010,000,000 for web
Results 901 - 914 of about 376,000,000 for computer

Although Google appear to be increasing the size of their index, the actual returns on these keywords is actually decreased:

Results 891 - 899 of about 54,100,000 for casino
Results 801 - 803 of about 31,100,000 for porn
Results 891 - 899 of about 910,000,000 for internet
Results 571 - 578 of about 5,370,000,000 for web
Results 621 - 630 of about 1,570,000,000 for computer

What is surprising is that there is apparently half the number of indexed documents containing the word “casino” since January, and only a third as many documents using the word “porn”.

Additionally, there are now roughtly a third fewer results returned for keywords such as “web” and “computer”.

While Google and Yahoo! are no doubt looking to impress investors with index size, it is difficult to sustain climas of increasing the index size, if the number of results returned is actually decreasing.

And of course, it requires underlining that the focus should not be on quantity but quality - and this is something claims of larger indices has yet to address.