11:11 Jan 12 

Brilliant Google: a search on Google.com and on Google.it gives 171,000, but if you are hungry for hits go to Google.co.uk and you get nearly double at 324,000. It seems they have done the impossible: a computer that can't count! Some terribly male chauvinist quips come to mind, but I'll zip my lips.

11:04 Jan 12 

10:58 Jan 12 

Can you paste in the URL, please. Re "counts for the first page are notoriously unreliable". I find that only occasionally you get your 'batman' phenomenon, where Google posts several thousand hits. Consequently, I often check this, when it seems suspect by looking at the bottom of the page, where you see that there are less than ten pages of hits. If you then click on the last page (seven in the batman case), you see the real number of hits actually posted by Google (69).

10:48 Jan 12 

Searching for the entire phrase "a good start is half the battle" (with quotes) in Google gives me 324,000. Perhaps if you go down a few pages the hit count will change; counts for the first page are notoriously unreliable (eg Google immediately claims 10,700 hits for "well played batman" for me, even though there are only 8 pages; on page 8 the count droops to a pitiful 74).

10:22 Jan 12 

If you restrict "Well done is half done" to the UK then all you get is 12,300, which would explain why I from England have never heard of it. The rest is mainly on .com sites, half of which tend to be American and the other half "the rest of the world"

https://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=&=&q="Well...
Restricting it to US universities (.edu) you get 26,300, twice as many as for the whole of the UK, so it would seem to be of Ancient Greek origin and commonly used in the United States today, but rare in the UK.

10:17 Jan 12 

I also got 171,000 hits, but got 1,880,000 for well begun is half done

10:08 Jan 12 

Neat putting "good start" with "half the battle". I'm curious about your Ghits. I only got 171,000, which is fair number. https://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=&=&q="a go...
How did you get 370,000? The maths for this in terms of probabilities of a six word combination in order is fascinating. I wish Google would give more info on their algorithms for hit counts.