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