Google is under constant siege by schmucks who, without knowing the secret of the special search sauce, attempt to game the algorithm according to its visible behavior in order to spam your search results with their crap. Google does a good job of foiling these fools, but no system is perfect. Also, it’s good to remember that the job that Google does is a very nearly impossible one when you consider the size of the index, the rate of changes, number of simultaneous users and return speed. Frankly I’d be willing to forgo some of the fancy crap Google does for me (no, thanks, Google, I know what I meant- and if I spelled it wrong I either will correct it myself or I meant to do it) and wait a little longer for results if they could be a little more relevant. Also, I would fall to my knees and sing hosannas if they would just order search results by age (starting with most recent) by default.
UGH I hate stale searches.