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by smartician 1611 days ago
Multiple things could be at play here. Google Search runs hundreds of experiments. Every time a parameter is tuned, or a snippet of code in one of the dozens of components that make up search is changed, that change is being canaried in an experiment. Users are randomly assigned to cohorts for these experiments (either based on their user ID when they're logged in, or a temporary user ID when they're not). Also, every search request will hit different servers holding different states, and sometimes processing components may time out intermittently. As a result, every user will see a slightly different set of results, or experience other diverging behavior like the truncation you're seeing. This might give the impression of personalized results, which in reality is not happening (only ads and other content that enhances the SERP are personalized).