This is hilarious though am not sure if it fits into the Google Easter eggs category:
Sorry, Google does not serve more than 1000 results for any query. (You asked for results starting from 990.)
In case you didn’t notice the flaw, that second (or first) ‘o’ dropped out of ‘Google’.
To reproduce this Google bug on your machine, search anything on Google and then append "&num=100&start=990" to the Google URL without quotes.
For instance, if you search for "pajamas media", then your Google URL would look like:
Original: http://www.google.com/search?q=pajamas+media
Modified: http://www.google.com/search?q=pajamas+media&num=100&start=990
Some CSS guru may help you figure out the reason behind this but the hack was initially discovered by Brian Brown at SEOmoz.org.
Related: The Most Expensive Part of Google Homepage
Find this article at: http://www.labnol.org/internet/break-google-search-results-page/4454/
web: http://www.labnol.org/ email: amit@labnol.org
Reader Comments
LOL!! looks insanely hilarious :D
Written by S on 09.08.08
That’s really cool…. thanks for the tip… but of course, its just useless for anyone…
Written by Pavan Kumar on 09.08.08
Great Find dude. Keep it up. It’s really a CSS flaw for sure.
Cheers!!
Written by techbaby on 09.08.08
Interesting! now sure how come this may happen, BTW is this happens in a single page result as well (without the next link).
Written by Prasanna S on 09.08.08
Wow!!!! Some Googlite will come up with a solution at some point.
But amusing nonetheless!
Written by Tom Anderson on 09.08.08
Really strange. But did you try and see what happens when we change the start value to some other no. I got the message (below search text box):
‘Sorry, Google does not serve more than 1000 results for any query. (You asked for results starting from 990.)’
Says “Doesn’t serve more that ‘1000′ results” (ANY query), but strangely if we search any other site name (ex:wikipedia), the result count is much larger.
Written by Techie on 09.08.08
for the example used, if the sum of &num and &start is greater than 1000, you get the message / error.
I’ve tried it with other queries ->> http://www.google.com/search?q=ibm&num=100&start=990 including multiple search terms ==> link
I’m not too sure what techie meant, but link also resulted in the same error
Conclusion: Its some broken logic / code around the ‘
Sorry, Google does not serve more than 1000 results for any query. (You asked for results starting from 990.)’ message.
Written by martin on 09.08.08
It’s nice there is always something new day by day I was knowing by your site thanks for info
Written by venkat on 09.08.08
Well thats hilarious.Fresh ideas only appear at The Google headquarters.
Written by Saim Baig on 09.09.08
In Google,every search navigation i.e.’o’ is enclosed inside a TD containing a Span(which has background image as ‘o’) and a Anchor tag having link to next set of results.
In the mentioned scenario, there is a image tag having “o”(Note not background)is displayed along with the break tag.which breaks the usual background generated ‘o’ to move below.so,there is Mistake in forming up the XHTML structure(logic gone wrong), not related to any CSS Bug
Written by Selva GK on 09.09.08
Still the perfect could not claim to be perfect. Google should know this.
Written by zazo on 09.10.08
Good find ….. but for me as long as search works I am okie ..
Written by Veresh on 09.10.08
Looks like they’ve fixed this. :(
Written by User on 10.09.08