Elliott Back links to an old post of mine and reports that Google has fixed a longstanding problem:
In a news release today, Google releases new numbers for the number of pages it can search. Looks like Google has overcome its 4-byte DocID problem and happily doubled its index:
You probably never notice the large number that appears in tiny type at the bottom of the Google home page, but I do. Its a measure of how many pages we have in our index and gives an indication of how broadly we search to find the information youre looking for. Today that number nearly doubled to more than 8 billion pages.
As Elliott correctly notes, Google’s apparently relying less and less on its flawed pagerank formula and more on other measures of relevance. I’m still impressed with how often Google finds just exactly the right page in response to a search request.
Ed Bott 