Q:

Wordpress function/plugin to count number of rows in mySQL table

I have additionals table in my Wordpress database that contain a lists of companies, link, description, etc.  I'm using this plugin (http://wpdatatables.com/) to render the table in WP and it works great.  
One feature it doesn't have is a way to count of the number entries (rows) in the table.  I'd like to get this count and display it in a page on wordpress.  For example, count all the rows in table X and display here (with a shortcode or something else) so I could have "TABLE X has 1,912 companies". 
I came across this as a way to get started, but not sure if it'll work for what I need and then I'm not sure how to actually get the result into a post/page. 
<? php
$myvar = $wpdb->get_results("SELECT COUNT(*) FROM company_table WHERE name=*");

if($myvar == 0)
{
// no rows, do whatever. 
}
else
{
// at least 1 row, do something else. 
}
? >

or this:
global $wpdb;
$wpdb->get_results( 'SELECT COUNT(*) FROM table_name' );
echo  $wpdb->num_rows . ' Rows Found';

How can I get the row count and display it on a page from this point (or some other recommended started point)? 
UPDATE
Okay, I made a plugin with a shortcode like this and can get it to appear in my page correct, but it's rendering the wrong number of rows.  It's only showing 1 row, when it should be several hundred. 
function row_count_shortcode() {
global $wpdb;
$wpdb->get_results( 'SELECT COUNT(*) FROM inno_db' );
echo  $wpdb->num_rows . ' Rows Found';
}
add_shortcode( 'row_count', 'row_count_shortcode' );

Any idea what the issue might be? 
Thanks

A:

Change get_results() to get_var()
$num_rows = $wpdb->get_var('SELECT COUNT(*) FROM inno_db');

