Huge change in 'Google results'

[thevirtual]

Has anyone noticed the huge change recently in the amount of search results displayed in Google.

I can confirm there is only a fraction of results being displayed then there used to be, for search terms. This change seems to be recent, but I am not sure.


Ex. compare Google results to Yahoo results for phrase:

222,000 Google results for "car dealer"
1,530,000 Google results for car dealer (without quotes)

26,800,000 Yahoo results for "car dealer"
172,000,000 Yahoo results for car dealer (without quotes)


Also Google is displaying a huge variation in results for words with and without capital letters:

Ex.

98,200,000 Google results for Domains
11,300,000 Google results for domains

The results are the same when you include quotes.



Here is an example from a previous Google search:

search done on Oct. 20:
5,330,000 Google results for "data base"

search done Today Nov. 13:
676,000 Google results for "data base"



Please discuss!

 

[cursal]

Looks like they are really fine tuning search.

Seems to match up (kind of) with the fine tuning in Adsense.

Must have started rolling this out around the PR update back around the end of Oct.

Edit* just did a search for "data base" and now we are at 673,000
and
"Domains" = 11,000,000
"domains" = 11,500,000

seem like really round numbers...odd :?: