[saluki]

It feels like maybe Google had a changing of the guard and a new batch of engineers are making decisions and missed out on a transfer of knowledge from the previous engineers with both search and SEO.

I'm seeing my search results show less and less of what I'm looking for, it's like google search is forgetting how it used to work.

The same with SEO, I'm seeing sites ranking again on the first page that have useless content using all the tricks/ghosts of SEO past. It seems all the legacy SEO hacks/tricks filters that had been in place at Google have been removed recently.

I was a huge fan of Google, but I'm definitely seeing a decline in quality of the SERP.

[quickthrower2]

Don’t forget that the web is changing. There is more junk produced every day and Google needs to combat search engine spam and blackhat practices. This means changes and not seeing search results you are used to.

[saluki]

Double True, but I'm expecting to start seeing thousands of keywords in the footer of sites white text on a white background. It's like SEO is coming full circle. Just surprised Google is allowing ancient SEO tricks to work again.

[Spooky23]

That's a key missing thread. The web is increasingly dumb, and the types of people who produced great content are now in the FB/Twitter skinnerbox, liking things like drunken monkeys.