
MSN's site: command is Confusing Me...
I'm working on a site review for a client, and I was checking to see how well the site was indexed across the major search engines. Normally we do a site: command and skip to the last page of results to get as accurate a count as we can; however, MSN's count is a little puzzling. When I first performed a count, it said the client's site had 180 pages indexed (it's a brand new site). Jumping to the 10th page, however, changed the count to 100, and I couldn't see any results beyond page 10. Furthermore, when I tried to go back to previous pages, the count remained at 100. What happened to 180?
I'll use SEOmoz as an example. Searching for "site:seomoz.org" returns 94,500 results:

Once I go beyond the 100th page of results, however, I'm automatically taken to the 100th page, where it says "Page 100 of 1,000 results":

If I go back one page to 99, it changes again and says there are 94,400 results:

The counts are the same regardless of whether or not I'm logged into Live Search. Why severely neuter the results after a certain page? I can understand only showing 100 pages of results, but other search engines don't cut off the pages *and* drastically alter the count after a certain page. This is all very perplexing to me, as I haven't noticed this until now. Has anyone else experienced this with MSN?
I'll use SEOmoz as an example. Searching for "site:seomoz.org" returns 94,500 results:

Once I go beyond the 100th page of results, however, I'm automatically taken to the 100th page, where it says "Page 100 of 1,000 results":

If I go back one page to 99, it changes again and says there are 94,400 results:

The counts are the same regardless of whether or not I'm logged into Live Search. Why severely neuter the results after a certain page? I can understand only showing 100 pages of results, but other search engines don't cut off the pages *and* drastically alter the count after a certain page. This is all very perplexing to me, as I haven't noticed this until now. Has anyone else experienced this with MSN?
The author's views are entirely their own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz.
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