on counting correctly

Realestate.co.nz state on their homepage that they are “featuring over 75,000 properties”.

Actually, if you add up the listings, they have just 71,522.

Seek.co.nz state on their homepage that they have “12,242 jobs online”.

Actually if you hit the search button they show just 11,836 jobs.

Search4jobs.co.nz show 6,586 jobs if you hit the search button from the homepage.

Actually, if you hit the search button again, there are “6,522 matches”

Trade Me Jobs show 3,185 jobs on the Trade Me homepage

Actually, if you hit the search button there are 3,186

Trade Me Motors show 38,104 cars on the Trade Me homepage

Actually, if you hit the search button there are 38,106

All of these numbers move – except for the realestate.co.nz 75,000 number, which is unchanging. Numbers are as at 9:45pm to 9:55pm, 2nd Jan, 2006.

The Trade Me homepage numbers were correct a couple of minutes later, but meanwhile the search results numbers changed. It appears that the homepage number is only generated every minute or three, which is fair as the results are essentially the same, and the database burden of a real-time result would be relatively large.

The Seek and Search4Jobs differences may be explained by different queries used to generate the two numbers – which if true should be fixed.

The realestate.co.nz hard coded number could well be classified as misleading advertising – there simply are not 75,000 listings.