londrum - 12:12 pm on Aug 29, 2010 (gmt 0)

i wonder if this is a possible reason why they're starting to favour new pages.

if you search for 'widgets' and get the same 5 totally amazing, but old, pages at the top every time, then people are bound to get to know them well. so next time they want the page the will go straight there. they wont need google, because they remember it.

but if google returns 5 new results every time then people will not get to know the pages so well, and will still need google to find them.

maybe that is a bit cynical, but if google wants to keep users coming back to them every day, then it makes more sense to weight new pages over old, even if they're not quite as good.