Google Fun #1.

I wrote this when I was, like, 15. Tagged as Lists.

Just the other day I was searching for common words in Google (the, of, to, and, a, an, is, it) and found these results:
  1. a 8 billion
  2. to 8 billion
  3. the 8 billion
I reckon thi… hmm. Isn’t it strange how it keeps returning eight billion results? Two theories on this:
  1. There are too many results for Google to practicably count, so it stops after a specific number. Or,
  2. Google knows there are heaps so it just returns a really high value so as not to use up processing power trying to count the results.
To find the real number of pages hosting those words I went to Yahoo, the second-most prominent search engine on the web. Here are the results in descending order, plus the site that came first on the list:
  1. a 4․33 billion [A&E Television]
  2. to 3․95 billion [V3 Web Hosting and Sub-Domains]
  3. the 3․93 billion [The Onion]
  4. of 3․84 billion [The Library of Congress]
  5. and 3․74 billion [Barnes & Noble]
  6. is 2․85 billion [Whatis?com]
  7. an 2․04 billion [An Doras: Clár Cinn]
  8. it 2 billion [Submit It!]
Well there ya go. Note that I didn’t put the words into quotes or anything, just searched as-is. Surely this list is worth something?