[s17n]

That's because the web was better in 2006.

I think Google has made one change for the worse, though, which is strongly favoring more recent content. Increasingly, I think that change has been a big contributor to the decay of the web since.

[zdragnar]

Part of the problem is, I think, many searches strongly benefit from up to date content- programming tools, fashion, celebrities, things to do in X area, etc.

It seems that Google has decided that most people want the most updated information when they look for something, which I don't think is entirely unreasonable.

What I would love, however, is a way to turn that off for particular searches. Researching past events, as a trivial example, benefits far more from exact results rather than most recent tangentially related blogspam.

[BarryMilo]

You mention options in passing, but it is to me the root of the problem: Google hates giving up control. Control means ad revenue. So we could have options that would make search extremely efficient for most users, but that would presumably be very hard to monetize in comparison. So we have no options, and everyone gets mediocre to bad results.

Since everyone I know in tech laments Google's decline into uselessness, I'm assuming this is not a sustainable strategy.

[jacobr1]

> everyone gets mediocre to bad results

Everything I've heard from people I know at Google suggests otherwise. Most searches for most people ... work. I too struggle to have google work in specific research cases, and I would like more power-user toggles, but basic searches like "$celeberty_name photos" or "$my_kids_school calendar" or "pizza places near me" just sorta work.

[BarryMilo]

Hard to know anything for sure since results are "tailored". But Google used to be excellent for technical searches, whereas now it is unhelpful at the best of times. I'm guessing this isn't counted in "most searches gor most people".

[mormegil]

> What I would love, however, is a way to turn that off for particular searches

But you can! In search results, click Tools and switch the Any time dropdown to Custom range... and you can specify a date range in the past. (Apparently, the custom option is hidden in the mobile version?!) I'm not sure how precise and dependable it is but it seems at least partially useful when I search for historical events.

[zdragnar]

I don't actually want to exclude new content, I just don't want to give it priority over older content if the older content is at least equally specific in matching my query.

[thethimble]

I think you’ve forgot the websites with walls of white-on-white keywords/links at the bottom, trying to game pagerank. Many of these models were marked improvements compared to the generations before.