How to Block Any Site from Showing Up in Google Search Results (2012)

Google's search results have never really been that great, to be honest, but their relative quality has drifted up and down over the years. For the quick-and-dirty searches that most people use Google for (including me) it's "good enough". But if you try to use it for a truly detailed search, and even if you pay close attention to what often gets returned for the average Q&D search, the results can be surprisingly lacking.

Funny story: Some years back I happened to mention the above casually in an online discussion concerning some unrelated topic. One of the participants in that discussion then challenged me to provide details, which I did. I thought that would be the end of it, but instead the other guy came back at me with what can only be described as "nasty" responses to my critique. This got me curious, so I dug into his posting history and it turned out that he actually worked for Google. When I brought this to everyone's attention he then proceeded to start deleting his posts, both the current ones and the ones in his history, which I thought was funny.

Now, under the circumstances he could have come back with suggestions on how maybe to improve my searches, or explaining why I might sometimes be seeing incomplete and/or inconsistent results, or what have you. But that's not what happened. Instead he treated me as if I were some kind of saboteur or something, one who was attempting to besmirch the good name of Google.