google 32-bit barrier

manmal · 2004-09-17, 11:39 AM

What do you think people is this the reason many of the pages are losing pr and is this a serious problem ? I've been reading and it makes me a bit worried because it can happened to any one .
This is what I'm talking about

Between Aug 04, 2003 and Aug 25, 2003 (just 21 days), Google added a little over 1.2 billion Web pages to their index. But since Aug 25, 2003 and today, Google hasn't added one single Web page to their index (at least according to Google they haven't).

Today, Google's home page states:
2004 Google - Searching 4,285,199,774 web pages

Now let's look at the history of Google's home page using "web.archieve.org" (they archive Web pages which you can review on-line as they were back when):

Aug 25, 2003
2003 Google - Searching 4,285,199,774 web pages

Now isn't this strange? The exact same number of Web page one year ago as it is today and next week will be the same ...

- yup, this is quite odd indeed. I just looked, it's still "©2004 Google - Searching 4,285,199,774 web pages", and it's 6 Sep 2004 today. Either the folks at Google are aware of this and they're just kidding around, or ... maybe there is something to the story, that they've hit their "limits to growth" and are figuring out what to do. And anyway, why is it stuck at 4,285,199,774 (2^32 - 9,767,522) and why not 4,294,967,296 (2^32)? Well, either there's something to the story, or there isn't. Hmm.

Greenguy · 2004-09-17, 01:16 PM

I've had sites that I built in the last year get indexed & listed, so it's not that they aren't adding new sites, but they might be removing old ones in the process so that the number is always the same.

cd34 · 2004-09-17, 01:52 PM

Even banned pages have a pageid -- there was a huge discussion of this when they went from the signed to unsigned int conversion.

Perhaps the number of pages on the internet is a constant. Google says it is so. Google is never wrong. Google is not evil (unless you believe ISS haha)

When you create a page, somewhere in the world, someone must be deleting them at that exact instant -- thoughts of a parallel universe in the same earth orbit come to mind.

Personally, I think it is probably just an oversight -- or not important enough for them to spend the time and effort to fix it. Maybe the person that fixes that just sold their pre-IPO stock and is sailing on the Med.

RawAlex · 2004-09-17, 02:48 PM

This is one of those "urban legend" things that seems to come up every so often. I heard it last year about the numbers for the year before, etc.

Google has changed the way they store pages and return results. They have marked many pages as "supplimental results", which some people suggest comes from a seperate but parallel list system. These are older pages, retred pages, duplicate pages, and pages that have redirected over time.

The "google number" is only a number. Trust me, they don't go out and recount the number of items in their database for each visitor. They may have stopped updating it, or there may be a limit only on the size of that field. Either way, I make new sites, they get in there, and the old ones are still there too.

Thank you to whoever deleted all those pages so I would have space.

Alex

urb · 2004-09-17, 02:50 PM

There's more speculation here
http://www.w3reports.com/?itemid=549

manmal · 2004-09-17, 03:01 PM

cd34 may be you are right but if what greenguy sad is true then eventual some of our old sites will be replaced with new sites and may be that new site will not be the one you've submitted etc. I know it sound stupid but I'm a bit worried about this situation . I'm searching for some more info on this bug here is one of the theory I found http://www.google-watch.org/broken.html they say that they've been monitoring google for the past 3 years so they proboly know a thing or two for google behaviors lately.If you have the time read it I did it sounds logical.

cd34 · 2004-09-17, 03:26 PM

I still think it is laziness that they haven't updated the front page.

They may have reclaimed a number of pageids by recently eliminating anything after the & in a url -- imagine how many dynamic sites use an & in the url. There were quite a few interesting hiccups generated from this with hosted galleries.

I think they also did something about the directory depth, which cuts off those people with sites that have multiple subdirectories. Based on those two things alone, they could probably reclaim a few hundred million pages.

No matter what the speculation is, only one thing matters. Are your pages still getting into google and staying there?

The 5-byte issue has been raised many many times. It is a difficult conversion to go from 4-byte to 5-byte (although you would think they would just step to 8-byte and use bignum and avoid the problem altogether) It would affect cpu performance, requiring an upgrade in cpu capacity, but, would eliminate the problem for a number of years.

However, the changes I have seen have all been algorithm based, and the fact that someone is too lazy to update the front page of the site hasn't affected or worried me.

DangerDave · 2004-09-17, 05:43 PM

Quote:

Well, either there's something to the story, or there isn't.

There isn't...

DD

Surfn · 2004-09-17, 07:44 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by DangerDave
There isn't...

DD

Agreed

doublep · 2004-09-18, 05:26 AM

Why? What evidence do you have to the contrary? Enquiring minds would like to know?

http://www.w3reports.com/?itemid=549

RawAlex · 2004-09-18, 11:08 PM

doublep: Like all good conspiracy theories, it is hard to disprove because the facts are not entered into evidence. The only "fact" we are playing with is a number on the front page of google that is more than likely set by hand.

It is sort of like "prove that god does not exist"... not enough facts in evidence to come to a conclusion on that, either! :-)

Alex

Trax · 2004-09-19, 06:54 AM

interesting read |afro|

doublep · 2004-09-19, 01:12 PM

Hi Alex :-)

I see the point you are trying to make - But, unlike
god, the search engine Google, despite it's ambiguities and secrecy, exists and operates within the laws and theories of mathematics, economics and computer science - not blind faith. I think the guy who started that thread has tried to explain the 'going's on' at Google using his understanding of how it works, and presents an interesting theory or two at least. That of course doesn't make it fact - but for those who are interested in the subject, it provides a starting point for further investigation at the very least (and many webmasters are interested in light of the last update). I would not advocate that anyone believe all that they read, but I do advocate asking questions, especially of those that are quick to dismiss anything on a whim.

Paul.

manmal · 2004-09-19, 02:30 PM

RawAlex read everything at http://www.w3reports.com/?itemid=549 you will see that there is more then just a theory read what Federico wrote he has some small evidence about the problem urb thanks for the link. the bottom line is if they have a problem quote "Google has 15,000+ Linux servers and 4.2 billion document_IDs to convert. This is not going to be an easy task at this point."
If some one has some more inforamtions about this bug pls post them here Urb thanks again.

out from the subject this guys is so fuuny

damn it makes my lught every time I see him nice choise green and jim.

DangerDave · 2004-09-19, 05:50 PM

One article on the internet does not a fact make

There are standard processes called "scientific method" and "peer review"(etc.) that this 'article lacks... thereby making it 'opinion'.(and we all know about opinions - they are like assholes!)

There are no references in this persons 'article'. He just rattles off facts like they are a given, when many are based on supposition and information the person is unlikely to "know"

He calls the article "Is Google broken?" again making it nothing but a theory.

In his first paragraph he says Between Aug 04, 2003 and Aug 25, 2003 (just 21 days), Google added a little over 1.2 billion Web pages to their index. - how does he know? did he index all of them by hand himself? did he take the number off the front page Google and just accept that it was fact?

If I write an 'article' on "That Greeny's dick size is proportionally based on the number of charcaters on his index page between 1997 and now", and get 100 people to post back to it saying "Hmm.. yes, that's true!" does that make it fact? no it makes it BULLSHIT, because that was what it was, when it was written.

DD

Greenguy · 2004-09-19, 07:46 PM

Let's try to leave my tiny dick out of these little discussions

doublep · 2004-09-20, 03:50 AM

The bigger the font the smaller the dick, I've always found

Linkster · 2004-09-20, 06:11 AM

I would have jumped in here earlier but Ive been busy for the last week - counting web pages - and I can report that that number is definitely wrong - its just a displayed number - thee's actually 4,285,199,796 pages out there

It really doesnt matter as asked in the first question - its "much ado about nothing" - and as DDave mentioned - It doesnt make it fact one way or the other just cause some idiot publishes an article. That "theory" has been around since 1992 - I'll find references if someone really wants to see earlier rants by other people that have way too much time on their hands to worry about what friggin number Google shows on its homepage - BTW - did you catch all the logos they used during the Olympics - they had hidden meanings built it

wicked1 · 2004-09-20, 06:32 AM

Thanks for sharing DoubleP , I've made a mental note never to stand next to you whilst taking a leak in the Mens Room.

doublep · 2004-09-20, 06:49 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Linkster
That "theory" has been around since 1992 - I'll find references if someone really wants to see earlier rants by other people that have way too much time on their hands to worry about what friggin number Google shows on its homepage

Now I am interested - 1992 - 3 years before Page and Brin actually met, do carry on, I love a good conspiracy theory :-)

Linkster · 2004-09-20, 12:15 PM

LOL - so I get a few decades mixed up - easy to do at my age - shoulda been 2002

doublep · 2004-09-20, 12:43 PM

Forgiven

I know were your'e coming from in that department! Hey Linkster I added you to my ICQ by the way - hit me up sometime when you are free

2004-09-17, 11:39 AM	#1
manmal Aw, Dad, you've done a lot of great things, but you're a very old man, and old people are useless Join Date: Sep 2004 Location: MKD Posts: 25	google 32-bit barrier What do you think people is this the reason many of the pages are losing pr and is this a serious problem ? I've been reading and it makes me a bit worried because it can happened to any one . This is what I'm talking about Between Aug 04, 2003 and Aug 25, 2003 (just 21 days), Google added a little over 1.2 billion Web pages to their index. But since Aug 25, 2003 and today, Google hasn't added one single Web page to their index (at least according to Google they haven't). Today, Google's home page states: 2004 Google - Searching 4,285,199,774 web pages Now let's look at the history of Google's home page using "web.archieve.org" (they archive Web pages which you can review on-line as they were back when): Aug 25, 2003 2003 Google - Searching 4,285,199,774 web pages Now isn't this strange? The exact same number of Web page one year ago as it is today and next week will be the same ... - yup, this is quite odd indeed. I just looked, it's still "©2004 Google - Searching 4,285,199,774 web pages", and it's 6 Sep 2004 today. Either the folks at Google are aware of this and they're just kidding around, or ... maybe there is something to the story, that they've hit their "limits to growth" and are figuring out what to do. And anyway, why is it stuck at 4,285,199,774 (2^32 - 9,767,522) and why not 4,294,967,296 (2^32)? Well, either there's something to the story, or there isn't. Hmm. __________________ Zzzzzz

2004-09-17, 01:16 PM	#2
Greenguy The Original Greenguy (Est'd 1996) & AVN HOF Member - I Crop Pics For Thumbs In My Sleep Join Date: Feb 2003 Location: Blasdell, NY (shithole suburb south of Buffalo) Posts: 41,788	I've had sites that I built in the last year get indexed & listed, so it's not that they aren't adding new sites, but they might be removing old ones in the process so that the number is always the same. __________________ Promote POV Porn Cash By Building & Submitting Galleries to the Porn Luv Network

2004-09-17, 02:50 PM	#5
urb All the way from Room 101 Join Date: Aug 2003 Posts: 3,557	There's more speculation here http://www.w3reports.com/?itemid=549 __________________

2004-09-17, 03:01 PM	#6
manmal Aw, Dad, you've done a lot of great things, but you're a very old man, and old people are useless Join Date: Sep 2004 Location: MKD Posts: 25	cd34 may be you are right but if what greenguy sad is true then eventual some of our old sites will be replaced with new sites and may be that new site will not be the one you've submitted etc. I know it sound stupid but I'm a bit worried about this situation . I'm searching for some more info on this bug here is one of the theory I found http://www.google-watch.org/broken.html they say that they've been monitoring google for the past 3 years so they proboly know a thing or two for google behaviors lately.If you have the time read it I did it sounds logical. __________________ Zzzzzz

2004-09-19, 06:54 AM	#12
Trax Hey, can you take the wheel for a second, I have to scratch my self in two places at once Join Date: Feb 2004 Location: 3rd Rock From Sun Posts: 181	interesting read \|afro\| __________________ Submit FS's to: MindBlowing Porn \| Fetish Links

2004-09-17, 01:52 PM	#3
cd34 a.k.a. Sparky Join Date: Sep 2004 Location: West Palm Beach, FL, USA Posts: 2,396	Even banned pages have a pageid -- there was a huge discussion of this when they went from the signed to unsigned int conversion. Perhaps the number of pages on the internet is a constant. Google says it is so. Google is never wrong. Google is not evil (unless you believe ISS haha) When you create a page, somewhere in the world, someone must be deleting them at that exact instant -- thoughts of a parallel universe in the same earth orbit come to mind. Personally, I think it is probably just an oversight -- or not important enough for them to spend the time and effort to fix it. Maybe the person that fixes that just sold their pre-IPO stock and is sailing on the Med.

2004-09-17, 02:48 PM	#4
RawAlex Took the hint. Join Date: Mar 2003 Posts: 5,597	This is one of those "urban legend" things that seems to come up every so often. I heard it last year about the numbers for the year before, etc. Google has changed the way they store pages and return results. They have marked many pages as "supplimental results", which some people suggest comes from a seperate but parallel list system. These are older pages, retred pages, duplicate pages, and pages that have redirected over time. The "google number" is only a number. Trust me, they don't go out and recount the number of items in their database for each visitor. They may have stopped updating it, or there may be a limit only on the size of that field. Either way, I make new sites, they get in there, and the old ones are still there too. Thank you to whoever deleted all those pages so I would have space. Alex

2004-09-17, 03:26 PM	#7
cd34 a.k.a. Sparky Join Date: Sep 2004 Location: West Palm Beach, FL, USA Posts: 2,396	I still think it is laziness that they haven't updated the front page. They may have reclaimed a number of pageids by recently eliminating anything after the & in a url -- imagine how many dynamic sites use an & in the url. There were quite a few interesting hiccups generated from this with hosted galleries. I think they also did something about the directory depth, which cuts off those people with sites that have multiple subdirectories. Based on those two things alone, they could probably reclaim a few hundred million pages. No matter what the speculation is, only one thing matters. Are your pages still getting into google and staying there? The 5-byte issue has been raised many many times. It is a difficult conversion to go from 4-byte to 5-byte (although you would think they would just step to 8-byte and use bignum and avoid the problem altogether) It would affect cpu performance, requiring an upgrade in cpu capacity, but, would eliminate the problem for a number of years. However, the changes I have seen have all been algorithm based, and the fact that someone is too lazy to update the front page of the site hasn't affected or worried me.

2004-09-18, 05:26 AM	#10
doublep If something goes wrong at the plant, blame the guy who can't speak English Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: Europe Posts: 306	Why? What evidence do you have to the contrary? Enquiring minds would like to know? http://www.w3reports.com/?itemid=549

2004-09-18, 11:08 PM	#11
RawAlex Took the hint. Join Date: Mar 2003 Posts: 5,597	doublep: Like all good conspiracy theories, it is hard to disprove because the facts are not entered into evidence. The only "fact" we are playing with is a number on the front page of google that is more than likely set by hand. It is sort of like "prove that god does not exist"... not enough facts in evidence to come to a conclusion on that, either! :-) Alex

2004-09-19, 01:12 PM	#13
doublep If something goes wrong at the plant, blame the guy who can't speak English Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: Europe Posts: 306	Hi Alex :-) I see the point you are trying to make - But, unlike god, the search engine Google, despite it's ambiguities and secrecy, exists and operates within the laws and theories of mathematics, economics and computer science - not blind faith. I think the guy who started that thread has tried to explain the 'going's on' at Google using his understanding of how it works, and presents an interesting theory or two at least. That of course doesn't make it fact - but for those who are interested in the subject, it provides a starting point for further investigation at the very least (and many webmasters are interested in light of the last update). I would not advocate that anyone believe all that they read, but I do advocate asking questions, especially of those that are quick to dismiss anything on a whim. Paul.

2004-09-19, 02:30 PM	#14
manmal Aw, Dad, you've done a lot of great things, but you're a very old man, and old people are useless Join Date: Sep 2004 Location: MKD Posts: 25	RawAlex read everything at http://www.w3reports.com/?itemid=549 you will see that there is more then just a theory read what Federico wrote he has some small evidence about the problem urb thanks for the link. the bottom line is if they have a problem quote "Google has 15,000+ Linux servers and 4.2 billion document_IDs to convert. This is not going to be an easy task at this point." If some one has some more inforamtions about this bug pls post them here Urb thanks again. out from the subject this guys is so fuuny damn it makes my lught every time I see him nice choise green and jim. __________________ Zzzzzz

2004-09-19, 05:50 PM	#15
DangerDave Bonged Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: BrisVegas, AUSTRALIA Posts: 4,882	One article on the internet does not a fact make There are standard processes called "scientific method" and "peer review"(etc.) that this 'article lacks... thereby making it 'opinion'.(and we all know about opinions - they are like assholes!) There are no references in this persons 'article'. He just rattles off facts like they are a given, when many are based on supposition and information the person is unlikely to "know" He calls the article "Is Google broken?" again making it nothing but a theory. In his first paragraph he says Between Aug 04, 2003 and Aug 25, 2003 (just 21 days), Google added a little over 1.2 billion Web pages to their index. - how does he know? did he index all of them by hand himself? did he take the number off the front page Google and just accept that it was fact? If I write an 'article' on "That Greeny's dick size is proportionally based on the number of charcaters on his index page between 1997 and now", and get 100 people to post back to it saying "Hmm.. yes, that's true!" does that make it fact? no it makes it BULLSHIT, because that was what it was, when it was written. DD __________________ Old Dollars >>>> Now with over 90 Hosted Free Sites <<<< DangerDave.com.au - Adult Links to Free Porn

2004-09-19, 07:46 PM	#16
Greenguy The Original Greenguy (Est'd 1996) & AVN HOF Member - I Crop Pics For Thumbs In My Sleep Join Date: Feb 2003 Location: Blasdell, NY (shithole suburb south of Buffalo) Posts: 41,788	Let's try to leave my tiny dick out of these little discussions __________________ Promote POV Porn Cash By Building & Submitting Galleries to the Porn Luv Network

2004-09-20, 03:50 AM	#17
doublep If something goes wrong at the plant, blame the guy who can't speak English Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: Europe Posts: 306	The bigger the font the smaller the dick, I've always found

2004-09-20, 06:11 AM	#18
Linkster NO! Im not a female - but being a dragon, I do eat them. Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Sex Delta Posts: 5,084	I would have jumped in here earlier but Ive been busy for the last week - counting web pages - and I can report that that number is definitely wrong - its just a displayed number - thee's actually 4,285,199,796 pages out there It really doesnt matter as asked in the first question - its "much ado about nothing" - and as DDave mentioned - It doesnt make it fact one way or the other just cause some idiot publishes an article. That "theory" has been around since 1992 - I'll find references if someone really wants to see earlier rants by other people that have way too much time on their hands to worry about what friggin number Google shows on its homepage - BTW - did you catch all the logos they used during the Olympics - they had hidden meanings built it __________________ Pussy Chompers Porn Links NSCash

2004-09-20, 06:32 AM	#19
wicked1 I'm going to the backseat of my car with the woman I love, and I won't be back for TEN MINUTES Join Date: Aug 2003 Location: Australia Posts: 82	Thanks for sharing DoubleP , I've made a mental note never to stand next to you whilst taking a leak in the Mens Room.

2004-09-20, 12:15 PM	#21
Linkster NO! Im not a female - but being a dragon, I do eat them. Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Sex Delta Posts: 5,084	LOL - so I get a few decades mixed up - easy to do at my age - shoulda been 2002 __________________ Pussy Chompers Porn Links NSCash

2004-09-20, 12:43 PM	#22
doublep If something goes wrong at the plant, blame the guy who can't speak English Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: Europe Posts: 306	Forgiven I know were your'e coming from in that department! Hey Linkster I added you to my ICQ by the way - hit me up sometime when you are free