MSN Beta Search claimed 5 Billion pages, Google doubled to 8 Billion

MSN Beta Search claimed 5 Billion pages, Google doubled to 8 Billion

It comes as a big surprise to me and many Search Engine Analysts. Just after Microsoft released its second beta of MSN Search, which claimed to be indexing around 5 billion pages; Google updated the homepage and Blog to show 8 billion indexed pages!

It is nearly double the earlier number and whether MSN Search launch has anything to do with it is something we may never know. It was being discussed in lots of forums and discussion groups that Google might have reached its technological limit with the 4 billion mark. But this would nullify all those claims.

Google indexes lot more than just web pages. It does file formats like PDF, PowerPoint, Flash, PostScript, Word files, and others. And the Blog post claims that we would now see a significant increase in the number of results for the search queries. The main benefit would be for queries related to complex and unique keywords.

Number of pages for a query is not really helpful when you cannot find the desired result in the top 2-3 pages. Google acknowledges this and promises to continue working on improving results to even better levels. Microsoft would have to work even harder to match this mark with their search engine if they want to stay in the race.

The competition has never been better for the common web surfer!