Is Google angry with PDFs???

[sergio]

Hi everybody,

I'm a google.com user from France (not a google.fr user).

Since something like wednesday, october the 30th, in the morning, google is not able to retrieve correctly PDFs.

Just try it where you are, maybe the problem is just located in France, next to Paris:

for example, make the following request:
car filetype:pdf

I am displayed these informations on top of the page:
Results 1 - 17 of about 5,740,000 for car filetype:pdf. (1.78 seconds)

Then come the 17 results. And when I hit the link "repeat the search with the omitted results included", only 29 results are then found.

How could it be done? Only 17 PDFs are displayed of about 5,740,000. But where are the "about 5,739,983" other PDFs? Are they all similary :) ???


Thanks for telling me how was your experience about querying google with the syntax "filetype:pdf".

Best regards,
----------
Don't worry, very very few people are named Sergio in France, it's just an alias ;)

[Phoenix]

Whoa, this is pretty interesting. I just did your exact search car filetypedf and observed the same thing, except I only got 11 results. I am located in Texas, USA.

Google told me the following:
In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 11 already displayed.
If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included.

Upon clicking the "search with omitted" results, I get about the same set, but 23 pages.

Maybe Google, is pissed at Yahoo and Adobe? lol

[Phoenix]

Tried this search with some other phrases:

education filetype:pdf

- Got 4 results out of 4,740,000 ...yeah

Also, tried your search with other filetypes. car filetype:doc, seems to return full set of results and I can click the next button to my hearts content.

Seem limited to pdf documents.

[rcjordan]

>education filetypedf

Confirm your Results 1 - 4 of about 4,640,000 from eastern US.

Obviously a screw-up, but let's start a "pdf-files-are-going-to-be-be-filtered-out-and-are-going-to-get-their-own-tab-in-advanced-search-because-nobody-likes-them-and-they-are-mostly-a-spam-tool-anyway" thread. Mostly because I'm bored, but ~hey~ it's really not that far-fetched an idea.

[jan]

This has been discussed elsewhere for a few days:

See: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=4504

Problem started on Monday for some users.

[sergio]

OK, thank you for your informations.

Very Best Regards