Of Recency And Search Engines
Back around 2005-2006, Google was excellent at what I think of as serious research. I could enter fragments of a hazily remembered idea from school 30-40 years ago, and the first page of results would be full of useful information, either fleshing out the idea, or explaining why that idea was no longer accepted by specialists in the field. Then, about 2007-2008, Google began changing the search algorythm to introduce what I call a recency bias: If nobody's talked about an idea recently, it doesn't show up in the top 100-200 results that are semi-hemi-demi related enough to match what I typed in.
Yes, there's Timeline, if I happen to know when an idea was published in a source Google has assimilated. But even there, ideas that people talk about *now* show up before what I'm looking for. This has bit me several times this week, as people asked me for evidence, and what I used to find in under five minutes back in 2005 has turned into slogs that came up empty while sending me to bed late.
Does anyone know a way, or site, to give me search results more like what Google gave before they began giving a recency bias to the results?
Yes, there's Timeline, if I happen to know when an idea was published in a source Google has assimilated. But even there, ideas that people talk about *now* show up before what I'm looking for. This has bit me several times this week, as people asked me for evidence, and what I used to find in under five minutes back in 2005 has turned into slogs that came up empty while sending me to bed late.
Does anyone know a way, or site, to give me search results more like what Google gave before they began giving a recency bias to the results?