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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.

Google Number of Results

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.

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About the author

Barry Schwartz
Barry Schwartz is a technologist and a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics.

In 2019, Barry was awarded the Outstanding Community Services Award from Search Engine Land, in 2018 he was awarded the US Search Awards the "US Search Personality Of The Year," you can learn more over here and in 2023 he was listed as a top 50 most influential PPCer by Marketing O'Clock.

Barry can be followed on X here and you can learn more about Barry Schwartz over here or on his personal site.