Grep prints one line per match. To return the number if matches, use the -c switch:

grep -c "something" filename

Do you need DevOps-experts?

Your development team has a full backlog? No time for infrastructure architecture? Our DevOps team is ready to support you!

• We build reliable cloud solutions with Infrastructure as code
• We are experts in security, Linux and databases
• We support your dev team to perform

Read more Show archive.org snapshot

However, if a word appears more than once in a line, it is only counted once.

To count every match, you can use sed Show archive.org snapshot to force line breaks on multiple matches:

sed 's/something/something\n/g' filename | grep -c "something"