News

Google Doubles Search Index

By Nate Mook | Published November 11, 2004, 10:49 AM

Coinciding with the preview of Microsoft's new MSN Search, Google has announced its search index has nearly doubled to a massive 8 billion documents. The company says users will now find more results on obscure topics that previously returned just a handful of Web pages. The new index places Google's search scope far beyond its rivals, but as Google V.P. of Engineering Bill Coughran notes, "The real test is how well we do in finding what you want from within those pages. We'll keep improving that too."

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slentz
Nov 11, 2004 - 11:38 PM

I have relized that some of my results from google is to unreliable recently. I think google should work on more of the gmail and desktop search before dubbling their index. I will always use google to search the intenet, but I think this is too much. Who will spent their time to look threw 2,000,000 pages to fine that one result. Also would that make results more unreliable??

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ririzarry
Nov 12, 2004 - 12:51 PM

Too many pages makes it unreliable? The last thing I want is Google or ANY source of information to hold back on what is available. I'm sure that there is room for improvement in terms of how Google determines relevance but if you're getting 2 million pages for a search then you are searching too generally. Use the tools that Google provides in its advanced search to narrow the results down. I wish I had your "problem" with some of the subjects I search on...

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speedmeister
Nov 12, 2004 - 4:47 PM

I disagree. Ideally you want a search engine to be a comprehensive index of the freely accesible Internet. How useful would a library that only cataloged a tiny fraction of their collection? They didn't just decide one day to double the size of their index. Google adds new pages every day. Over the years Google has tried to create an idex that tries to be comprehensive while filtering out duplicates and other chaff. Some who have managed to successfully spam the index have managed to get certain pages listed for terms for which they have no conceivable relationship. They could do better at finding ways to get rid of affiliate spam and redundant mirrors of pages.

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