If I search Google for "alex spektor" (in quotes) it returns me about
1450 links. If I search for alex spektor (no quotes) it returns only
one link. Why?

---

Request for Question Clarification by tutuzdad-ga on 23 Nov 2003 14:03 PST

Is it still doing it? Whatever was causing it must have been corrected
since I was unable to recreate the problem. My search found 2130
returns using quotation marks and 2980 without. Subsequent searches
repeated only a few minutes later in the same fashion returned 2150
and 2990 respectively. The engine appears to be crawling these pages
and finding new results over time.

Regards;
tutuzdad-ga

---

Clarification of Question by yasasha-ga on 23 Nov 2003 14:28 PST

It is strange - now it returns for me 48 without quotations and still
1450 with quotations. Still weird result. Use to (i.e. a week ago) it
returned me ~1500 with NO quotes, and ~800 with quotes. Now it is
appositive. Also strange that we (tutuzdad and me) have got different
result.... Is it could be because of our different location, or there
is something to do with cookies?

It appears that Google is still dancing. I used the tool at:
http://googledance.seochat.com/

...and found one datacenter that is showing the strange results:

ex-google:  1930 / 2730
va-google:  2130 / 2970
dc-google:  2140 / 2980
ab-google:  2140 / 2970
in-google:   2140 / 2730
cw-google:  2150 / 2990
fi-google:    2140 / 2970
gv-google:   1440 / 2000
kr-google:    1450 / 48
lm-google     1450 / 2010

google.de:    2140 / 2000
google.fr:      2140 / 2970
google.ca:     2140 / 2980
google.co.uk: 2130 / 2990
google.it:      2140 / 2970

kr.google was showing major differences in the ranking, whereas each
time I ran the search, a couple of the regional searches showed
slighly different order of results.

It is normal during the Google Dance to get a mix of results depending
on whether server has been updated or not. But as to why you would get
much less results without quotes, that is a mystery.