Google Forcing Some Searchers Into 20 Search Results

For some searchers, Google seems to be forcing them into 20 or more search results on a page. By default, Google shows searchers 10 results on a page, but even if that searcher specified 10 on a page, some may be seeing twenty or more per page.

Andy Beard and myself are in that test or possibly a weird bug group. When we search, I am on Mac Chrome in the U.S. and Andy is on Firefox in the Poland, we are getting 20 or more results per search results page. Personally, I am getting about 30 results and Andy is getting 20 results per page.

Adding ‘&num=10’ to the end of the search URL and/or saving your search preferences to show 10 “number of results” makes no difference.

At first, I thought it might be a bug with Chrome on a Mac but then I heard from Andy that he was using Firefox. It may be a test or it may be a bug that is not browser specific. If I find out more from Google on if it is an “experiment” of theirs, I’ll let you know. For now, I hope that Google overriding a specific search setting is a bug and not an experiment.

Postscript: You can read our live blogging or learn how to watch the Google search event live at 9:30 PST by going here.