Buzz Bruggerman blogs, “What’s in a vanity search? Or why are the numbers so far off?”
He mentions that Google returns a much larger number of total results for his name (as well as several others) in quotes, ie. “Buzz Bruggerman” returns 24,100 results on Google and only 4,079 results on MSN Search.
But more interestingly, neither engine lets you see all of those results that it supposedly found! In his case, Google did still show a greater number of results (about 1,000 vs. 500), but he says that MSN’s number seems much closer to reality.
Tim Bray has a good explanation of what's probably going on here.
Personally, I don’t know what all the hubbub is about:
