MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA – A short Reddit article earlier this month revealed that Google had “quietly” removed the num=100 search parameter. A Google press release search on the topic came up empty, but Reddit revealed that the simple code trick that lets users see 100 results on one page (instead of the default 10) is gone.
According to Reddit: “Most large language models like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Perplexity rely directly or indirectly on Google’s indexed results to feed their retrieval systems and crawlers. By cutting off the long tail of results, Google just reduced what these systems can see by roughly 90 percent. The web just got shallower not only for humans but for AI as well.”
Reaction is decidedly mixed with one commenter opining: “It’s an interesting signal about how Google protects its data pipeline, but calling it a 90% reduction in what ‘AI can see’ is way off. The real shift is from search-based retrieval to model-based recall.”
“Honestly, I think it’s a genius move by Google,” adds Andrew Maffettone, founder and CEO, BlueTuskr (a Prosper 2026 exhibitor). “Sure, it might temporarily limit what other AI platforms can pull, but they’ll find a workaround soon enough. If anything, this could spark a new wave of innovation as other models start building their own scraping or indexing systems to compete. Google just raised the bar again—and forced everyone else to get more creative. What will be interesting is whether someone will eventually do everything better than Google.”