I have a feeling that Google screwed up the search results and they are more irrelevant now compared the searches someone could receive an year ago. What do you think about it? cheers
I think Google does a pretty good job overall. There are millions of crappy sites out there (mostly for Adsense income) and some pretty sophisticated spam. The only problem with Google it the collateral damage of innocent and newer sites that don't make into their listings.
I wont say that its collateral damage, rather google (bot) would wait and watch whether your website is good enough and other websites link to it.. before they bring it up in their search rankings. If you are good enough you rank higher automatically within a shorter span. But the question is are the searche results in Google irrelevant , I would say that "No" if you search the same with MSN or Yahoo you may get more crappy websites as "canadianeh" said. So google rules...
I would say yes since authority sites that have little to nothing to do with what i was looking for out rank sites that are more relevant .
That is only true with non-competitive keywork phrases. If you in a competititve industry you need tons of links to rank well and Goolgle will penalize you if you get too many links too fast.
Overall, Google has great results. I use both Yahoo! and Google and I've noticed fresher results with Yahoo! and much more fluctuation. Yahoo! has a lot better results for some fields, while Google is better in others.