Editing Encyclopedia:Search engine test (section)

===General===
{{shortcut|WP:HITS}}
A raw hit count should never be relied upon to prove notability. Attention should instead be paid to what (the books, news articles, scholarly articles, and web pages) is found, and whether they actually {{em|do}} demonstrate notability or non-notability, case by case. Hit counts have always been, and very likely always will remain, an extremely erroneous tool for measuring notability, and should not be considered either definitive or conclusive. A manageable sample of results found should be opened individually and read, to actually verify their relevance.

In the case of Google (and other search engines such as Bing and Yahoo!), the hit count at the top of the page is unreliable and should usually not be reported. The hit count reported on the penultimate (second-to-last) page of results may be slightly more accurate. For searches with few reported hits (less than 1000) the actual count of hits needed to reach the bottom of the last page of results may be more accurate, but even this is not a sure thing. Google returns different search results depending on factors such as your previous search history and on which Google server you happen to hit.<ref>
{{cite web |title=Reliability Verification of Search Engines' Hit Counts |url= http://gplsi.dlsi.ua.es/congresos/qwe10/fitxers/QWE10_Funahashi.pdf |work=Proceedings of the 10th international conference on Current trends in web engineering |publisher=Computer Science and Engineering Division, Waseda University |date=2010 |last1=Takuya |first1=Funahashi |last2=Hayato |first2=Yamana |access-date=5 May 2015}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Why Google Can't Count Results Properly |url= http://searchengineland.com/why-google-cant-count-results-properly-53559 |website=SearchEngineLand.com |date=21 October 2010 |last1=Sullivan |first=Danny |access-date=5 May 2015}}</ref>

Other useful considerations in interpreting results are:
* Article scope: If narrow, fewer references are required. Try to categorize the point of view, whether it is NPoV, or other; e.g., notice the difference between [[Ontology]] and [[Ontology (computer science)]].
* Article subject: If it's about some historical person, one or two mentions in reliable texts might be enough; if it's some Internet [[neologism]] or a [[Pop music|pop song]], it may be on 700 pages and might still not be considered 'existing' enough to show any notability, for Wikipedia's purposes.