If you look at the number of results rather than the results themselves, you clearly care about the number. The number is the information. It can answer a question like: How many books in the Library of Congress contain the word "God"?[1]
Similarly whenever I've looked at the number of results in Google it was to judge how common something is. For example, if I want to know the most commonly used spelling between two options, I Google both and check the number. That's what the number is helpful for, and really the only thing it could be helpful for. It is its own information.
[1] I know the question might need to be revised for the number to reflect the answer accurately; you get the idea.
But that number has no way of inspecting it to know what it actually means. Is it including prefix searches? Suffix? Whole word only? Possible misspellings? Acronyms? Translations?
I get that it can be somewhat directional, but I question that anyone is getting meaningful data out of it. :(
You've just opened a can of worms. It raises a very interesting question: when asking something like
> if I want to know the most commonly used spelling between two options
do those mirrors count as "use" of the word? Or does "use" refer only to the original writer?
If a neologism is written once and read by millions, it carries more weight than one read by only a few people. Perhaps the same goes for spelling variants: the more people see it, the more people agree it's the typical spelling. Lots of mirroring could be a decent proxy for lots of readership.
The number is not _the_ information. It's just _some_ information. When I search the web I want the content, and very very rarely care about the actual number of results. So yeah, showing a search result count they can't actually serve is dishonest and gives a false sense of reality.
No, in context of what I said (when the number is what you're looking at) the number is the information. If the content is what you care about, the number being 2 million or 5 million is meaningless because you'll never get through all the content.
Similarly whenever I've looked at the number of results in Google it was to judge how common something is. For example, if I want to know the most commonly used spelling between two options, I Google both and check the number. That's what the number is helpful for, and really the only thing it could be helpful for. It is its own information.
[1] I know the question might need to be revised for the number to reflect the answer accurately; you get the idea.