I add the standard search result web part to an empty page layout. I click "change query", and add the query I want. The search result preview shows 179 results. Perfect, just what I wanted. I click "OK", "Apply", and publish the page. Now it only shows 7 results. I haven't configured nothing else on the search result web part.
Where did the remaining 172 results go? Any suggestions are appreciated :)
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/jj687488.aspx
I had the same issue, it turned out that Search Results web part was incorrectly trimming results that were considered duplicates.
I fixed this by setting TrimDuplicates to false. To do this:
Hope that helps Christopher Scolt