I think this is real. In my niche, I've seen some sites that are obviously gaming Google and getting away with it, as well as Google being biased toward older (

I think this is real. In my niche, I've seen some sites that are obviously gaming Google and getting away with it, as well as Google being biased toward older (but aging) sites. I don't think it's necessarily that Google's algorithm has become worse as much as it is just sites gaming Google a whole lot more. A lot of the most basic blackhat SEO techniques still seem to be working quite well. I think that problem leads Google toward trusting the older results more, which results in the second effect. I imagine it's a balancing act for them. I think there will be a third wave of search engines some day. Google's approach has worked great until now, but I can't imagine it will continue to work well in 10 - 20 years from now.