The problem is that this count is a very rough approximation, and labeled as such. For simple queries the search engine tries very hard to find the 'best' matches and does not spend too much time trying to get an accurate count. To get an accurate count, go to the Advanced Search page and select 'as a Count Only' in the second pull-down menu, enter the query and, surprise, the real count is 51,570 tonight. So if geocities really has 300,000 pages, we are not doing too badly. The truth is that no search engine indexes the whole Web.
Size alone is a poor measure of usefulness.
This is larger than the usage on all other search engines combined, not counting our friend Yahoo who is not an index but a directory. We have made the choice to always meet the demand while maintaining average query times of a fraction of a second through heavy hardware investments and software upgrades. As a consequence the index size has not increased much to allow for the tremendous growth in users. Our goal is to continue to offer first-class service while tracking the growth of the Web. The usage numbers show that most people find the index very useful, even if it does not contain every page of every site.