Anyone else see very weird page counts for search results: searching "fountains" 1.3 million results. Last week, this was about 16 million searching "halloween decorations" 407,000 results. Last week, well over 10 million. Absurdly low. I, of course, only look at words I care about - but it seems to be happening on lots of other random queries too. I know you can only see the first 1,000 results anyways, but it seems like the total count is way down.
I noticed that too. But my explanation for this is google give results on different DC. So the one you encounter is the perfect example on how google giving results. SERP varies on different DC. So this might the reason why you are seeing this. But also there is an update really on backlinks and indexed pages this last few weeks. SERP also has a major shuffle on its results. I don't know on how long it will took to stay at this position on SERP because one of the site I'm managing is having problems with the latest algorithm.