[dlp211]

Ok, what do you think is more realistic for a term like 'cows', that there are only a few hundred references or that there are millions.

I'm not going to say that the UX is designed well end-to-end, but Google doesn't display more than X number of results for a given search string, ever, where X is O(100). It costs way too much money and you are unlikely to find what you are looking for by showing you more than the top X results.

[P5fRxh5kUvp2th]

I think actually being able to serve up millions of results would be more realistic.

It's the internet. The internet is huge. I can imagine there being millions of pages that mention cows in some manner. I know google indexes the internet, therefore I would expect that if it tells me millions that there are actually millions _THAT IT CAN SHOW ME_.

When it tells me 10 million and only shows me 8 million, I'll be forgiving. Maybe exasperated, but forgiving. When it tells me 10 million and can only show 400, that exasperation quickly turns into distrust.

[rufus_foreman]

>> Ok, what do you think is more realistic for a term like 'cows', that there are only a few hundred references or that there are millions

final short maxReferencesWeAreGoingToDisplay = 400;

final short numDisplayedReferences = Math.min(totalReferencesWeFind, maxReferencesWeAreGoingToDisplay);

I'll send you a bill for my consulting services.

I estimate my consulting charges at about 10 cents an hour. There's a help page somewhere that tells how many orders of magnitude that estimate might be off by.

[tomrod]

A few hundred, because that is what is being provided by the service.

"I found a billion hits, but I'm only giving you two" is in no way a good defense. It is blaming the user for a completely reasonable interpretation of the language -- weasel words are not appreciated by people.

[dlp211]

You think a for-profit company should invest in a feature/edge case that will never be used in an earnest or useful way?

The idea that you would earnestly search through 400 records only to not find what you are looking for --but the 401st record would-- is just not a realistic use-case.

[tomrod]

No, I expect them to list the number of results within an order of magnitude of what is available for the user to review, which would be an accurate and reasonable report for what is provided.

And if they want to offer your proposed crazy edge case as a service, folks needing it are willing to pay for organized information that is deep.

[Amezarak]

I agree this is not a common use use case. But it is absolutely a realistic edge case and I used to do it. It is exactly these edge cases that make software truly useful. Multiple search engines are as good at the common case.