it would be hard for me to say that the search results from google have increased in quality at all in the past five years Well, I know SQUAT about Google

it would be hard for me to say that the search results from google have increased in quality at all in the past five years Well, I know SQUAT about Google's search team. But just as a thought experiment, let's ask whether the 'net has changed in the last five years? It seems to me that whatever "algorithm" was in place back then would be gamed to death by now. Spammers would have all their dreck at the top of every search result. And that's not even counting the criminals who want their drive-by download payloads delivered... There's a constant war against spam and crime, and while Google has a stupendous amount of money to invest in winning it, the other side has an amazing war chest and a massive army fighting against them. I have no idea, maybe it only takes an hour a week for one engineer to keep things ticking along. But I can easily imagine that the team has to do a lot of work just to keep results from getting worse.