which word, number, character or search string delivers the highest no
of hits (results) in google? The question is answered if you can beat
the word "of" which delivers 2,220,000,000 hits.

bnc_user -

Thanks for the challenge.
"the" just delivered 3,270,000,000 hits.

It wasn't the first term I tried, because I had assumed it would
simply be ignored...but it wasn't... ;-)

thanks,
ragingacademic

Interestingly, "the" returns 3.3 billion hits, more than the 3.1
billion pages Google claims to index.

I was trying to find a search that would bring up the number of Web
sites indexed, but Google would not search on "." or on any other
punctuation marks.  Thought "www" would surely do it, but elicited
just under a billion hits.

ragingacademic