[Pxtl]

To be fair, Google has always been trash at searching for recentness. I don't remember a time when searching "recommended X (current year)" didn't return old out-of-date info. I think Google has had a habit of returning 3-year-old pages since its inception.

[gundmc]

Did you try clicking Search Tools and limiting the date range there instead of in the query string? Always works for me.