Jean Véronis has done a mathematical study that shows that a random selection of popular words shows an almost exactly 13% increase in Google’s index in the last two months. He studied the differences in search results for 16 words, comparing results from 11/22/2004 (just over a week after Google upped its public index number from 4 billion to 8 billion) to results from 1/22/2005. As shown in this graph, all 16 queries increased in a proportion that is a quasi-perfect correlation to a perfect straight line (determination coefficient> 0,999), numbers that are too statistically significant to ignore:

If all the queries coincide with a regression of 1.13, that means Google’s index has increased roughly 13% over the two month period, which Jean says translates to an index of 9,105,590,456 pages, up from the 8,058,044,651 that has been reported over that period.

Of course, faithful readers know that Google is lying.

This screenshot, taken by myself on November 10th, shows that Google had then at a minumum, 10,980,000,000. See, that night, the new MSN Search entered beta, and Google felt the need to up its page count to make sure MSN couldn’t claim to have more pages. Since Google never reports the correct page count, all it had to do was recount its index, and post any random number higher than MSN’s 6 billion. Apparently, marketing decided 8 billion was a good number, but not before I snagged a screenshot of the results page in mid-count.

Lets make a few assumptions. First, assume that 11 billion was as high as it got, and that had I come back an hour later, it wouldn’t have been 12. Second, when Google reports there being only 8 billion pages today for the, its lying. The actual number would have to be 12,407,400,000, or 10,980,000,000×1.13. Now, any number under 8 billion, we can trust. So, narrowing it down, which my best list of 32 very popular terms on Google, removing each previous one (i.e. searching for the, then a -the, then and -a -the…):

• the = 12,407,400,000
• a = 60,000,000
• and = 40,200,000
• of =34,400,000
• i = 39,700,000
• this = 19,800,000
• that = 1,660,000
• or = 17,300,000
• you = 8,470,000
• e = 40,000,000
• s = 28,300,000
• your = 9,520,000
• page = 25,600,000
• not = 4,120,000
• d = 28,200,000
• t = 17,300,000
• us = 16,400,000
• l = 17,400,000
• c = 27,700,000
• can 1,310,000
• http = 19,500,000
• if = 1,030,000
• do = 10,300,000
• other =4,090,000
• m = 13,600,000
• o = 11,300,000
• but = 395,000
• n = 17,500,000
• y = 12,200,000
• my = 6,550,000
• news = 19,000,000
• b = 9,120,000

I have Google’s new 32 word limit to thank for being able to find just those 13,169,365,000 results. I think we can safely assume there are anywhere from 13.5 to 14 billion pages in Google’s index, far more than the 8 billion currently reported. Any other search engine is going to have to play catch-up, big time.

Oh, and assuming a 13% trend for the rest of the year, Google on January 22, 2006 would have around 15.5 billion pages.