Google Search has many hidden settings and search parameters that customize results pages. Unfortunately, one of them is no longer working reliably, and might be removed entirely in the future: the “num” option.
Google normally shows ten page links on each page of search results, requiring you to click the next page link at the bottom to see more results. There was a hidden way to display up to 100 results on one page: you just had to add &num=100 to the end of the search URL. Those additional results usually aren’t helpful for quick information queries, but sometimes it was helpful to see more results without clicking back and forth between pages.
Unfortunately, the “num” feature is no longer reliably working. The option for &num=100 used to provide a single long search page with 100 results, but now it usually returns the same number of results per page as a default search. Search Engine Roundtable reported that it “works about half the time,” but it seems totally broken for me. Other hidden search attributes like the “&udm=14” option that turns off AI Overviews, are still working in my web browser.
Google Search switched to infinite scrolling in 2021, which continued loading new results as you scrolled down the page, though desktop platforms didn’t get that change until 2022. That change was reverted in mid–2024, bringing back the separate page results with the “Goooooooooogle” navigation. The “num” trick allowed people to see more results without waiting for more pages to load, until recently.
Even though the option is not well-known among the general public, it is a popular tool for search engine optimization (SEO) people. Many third-party tools for tracking a website’s placement in a given search query use that hack while doing web scraping on Google’s search pages. With that option gone, some of those tools are no longer working properly.
Google hasn’t confirmed the feature’s removal, so this might just be a temporary bug. Hopefully, it comes back soon.
Source: @SEowner on Twitter/X via Search Engine Roundtable
