Assertion certainty 4/5 debate potential 1/5

Google engagement plummeted when displaying over ten search results per page

Marissa Mayer · Small changes with big impact (with Bumble's Whitney Wolfe Herd) | Masters of Scale · Oct 27, 2023 · at 24:25

Marissa Mayer was not on this episode. A recording of them was played into it, so these are their words but not an appearance on Masters of Scale. It still counts as said, and it is kept out of every score on their page.

Former Google executive Marissa Mayer reflects on early Google experiments testing whether users engaged more with 10, 20, 25, or 30 search results per page.

0:00 / 0:13exact quote · 13.4s

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“So we looked at, like, first page search results. Requested per user, and basically it fell off dramatically between 10 and 20. 25 was even worse. 30 was worst of all. The results were really dramatic.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

The claim, plainly

During early Google search experiments, user engagement and searches requested per user dropped dramatically when displaying 20, 25, or 30 results per page compared to 10 results.

a quote alone can be ambiguous, so this restates it with the references and context of the conversation around it resolved. AI-written; the tape below the player is the source.

How this resolves

Settling this requires access to proprietary internal Google A/B testing telemetry and search log datasets from early experiments comparing 10, 20, 25, and 30 results per page. Because raw internal user metrics and experiment logs are private, this claim cannot be independently verified via public records.

not yet assessed: in the resolution queue (grounded fact checks run in waves; this one's next)

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Google engagement plummeted when displaying over ten search results per page

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