The phrasal verbs on this page are ranked in order of frequency of occurrence in a Google search run on 23 May 2007. The search was against all English websites, using the base form of the verb; e.g., "take in", "make do with". The numbers shown on the right indicate the number of hits in thousands. So the search string take in was found in ???????? (24,0000 x 1000) pages.

Note: Most phrasal verbs have more than one meaning. No attempt was made to filter the hits for only those pages containing phrasal verbs with the meaning chosen for this list. So the ranking of a phrasal verb does not give reliable information on the frequency of the verb (with its chosen meaning) relative to the frequency of the other phrasal verbs (with their chosen meanings).

There is more about the principles by which these verbs were selected on the page entitled Important information about phrasal verbs.