Google results are almost half when searched from the Firefox search bar

Client Parameter Makes Google Report Fewer Matches (SearchEngineWatch)

Here is an interesting find. If you do a Google search from the search bar within the Firefox browser, the search results are cut down by half, or even less than half sometimes. According to the article, it has to do with the client parameter that goes along with the search string. When a search is done from the search bar, the string &client=firefox-a is added along with the search string, and this is the culprit. Not only Firefox, ANY client parameter will reduce the search results by half. "Why would Google's clients/partners hit less than the entire Google database? In the past, search providers have done this to save burden on their servers. Rather than query the entire database, only a portion might be hit -- and that portion might be deemed good enough", says Danny Sullivan. Search for "Firefox" from the search bar gave me 2,250,000 results, where as the same search from the Google website gave me 5,310,000 results - more than half.

Source: Webstractions