TITLE: Counting the Groups of Order n Weighted by 1/|Aut(G)| 
QUESTION [28 upvotes]: Idle question:  
Let $g(n)$ be the sum, over all isomorphism classes of groups of order $n$, of $\frac{1}{|Aut(G)|}$ where $G$ is a group in the class. Thus $g(n)n!$ is the number of group laws on a fixed set of size $n$. Is anything known about the asymptotic behavior of this quantity? I could easily believe that abelian groups account for most of it. If we only count abelian groups, calling the analogous number $a(n)$, then the function $a$ is clearly multiplicative in the sense that $a(mn)=a(m)a(n)$ when $m$ an $n$ are relatively prime, and I believe that the function $a(p^k)$ can be written as an explicit function of $k\ge 0$ and the prime $p$: $a(p)=\frac{1}{p-1}$, $a(p^2)=\frac{p}{(p-1)(p^2-1)}$, $a(p^3)=\frac{p^3}{(p-1)(p^2-1)(p^3-1)}$.
ADDED: So it looks like $a(p^k)=p^{\frac{(k(k-1)}{2}}\prod_{1\le j\le k}(p^j-1)^{-1}$. (I checked it up to $k=4$.) If you let $m\ge k$ and use the fact that every abelian group of order $p^k$ is isomorphic to a subgroup of $(\mathbb Z/p^m)^k$ and the fact that every isomorphism between two such subgroups is induced by an automorphism of $(\mathbb Z/p^m)^k$, you can interpret this as saying that the sum, over all automorphisms $g$ of $(\mathbb Z/p^m)^k$, of the number of subgroups of order $p^k$ in the fixed set of $g$, is a certain power of $p$. But I can't think of a reason why that should be true.

REPLY [15 votes]: Higman and Sims showed that the number of groups of order pm is somewhere around p2m3/27, up to some smallish correction that I cant remember offhand. This is vastly bigger than the size of the typical automorphism group of such groups, so dividing by the automorphism group does not make much significant difference to this number.
The number of groups of order at most N is dominated by those of order a power of 2. (The next most common are those of order 3 times a power of 2).  The number of groups of given order N has been worked out exactly for N up to about 2000.