Google Search has many hidden parameters and search parameters that personalize the results pages. Unfortunately, one of them no longer works reliable and could be completely deleted in the future: the “NUM” option.
Google normally displays ten page links on each page of search results, forcing you to click on the link on the next page at the bottom to see more results. There was a hidden way to display up to 100 results on a single page: you just have to add &num=100 at the end of the research URL. These additional results generally are not useful for quick information queries, but it has sometimes been useful to see more results without clicking in both directions between the pages.
Unfortunately, the “NUM” function no longer works reliably. The option for &num=100 Used to provide a single long search page with 100 results, but now it generally returns the same number of results per page as default search. Round table of the search engine have reported that it “works about half of the time”, but it seems completely broken. Other hidden research attributes such as the “& UDM = 14” option which deactivates AI previews, still work in my web browser.
Google Search went to the infinite scrolling in 2021, which continued to load new results when you scrolled through the page, although the office platforms only obtained this change in 2022. This change was returned in mid-2024, bringing the separate results of the page with the navigation “goooooooooo”. The “NUM” tip allowed people to see more results without waiting for more pages to load, until recently.
Even if the option is not well known among the general public, it is a popular tool for optimizing search engines (SEO). Many third -party tools to follow the placement of a website in a given search query use this hacking during web scratching on Google search pages. With this disappeared option, some of these tools no longer work properly.
Google has not confirmed the deletion of the functionality, so it could be a temporary bug. Hopefully it comes back soon.
Source: @seowner on Twitter / X via the search engine round table
