# Google shrinkage

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-shrinkage/236732>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [March 27, 2004, 1:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-shrinkage/236732 "2004-03-27T13:43:03Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Snooooopy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ee7513/32.png) [@Snooooopy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snooooopy)\
**Post date:** [March 27, 2004, 1:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-shrinkage/236732/1 "2004-03-27T13:43:03Z")

</div>

Say I Google something and it displays eight pages of hits. If I click on Page 2, sometimes the number of pages will have shrunk to seven. What happened to the last page of hits?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Cugel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cugel/32/1199_2.png) [@Cugel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cugel)\
**Post date:** [March 27, 2004, 2:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-shrinkage/236732/2 "2004-03-27T14:36:31Z")

</div>

The initial display of page numbers is over by one, selecting the last one and the 2nd last one gives the same page.

Can’t see why they’d do that on purpose, as it corrects itself when you do go to another page.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![rsa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/839c29/32.png) [@rsa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rsa)\
**Post date:** [March 27, 2004, 2:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-shrinkage/236732/3 "2004-03-27T14:55:06Z")

</div>

> [@Google](#):
>
> In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 27 already displayed.  
> If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included.

The initial page count includes all of the results. As you page forward, the omitted entries reduce the page count.