tangor - 6:05 am on Oct 23, 2010 (gmt 0)

Google can't afford to have this sort of problem continue for long.

There's no hurry... Google is "today" and all the users are "today", too. Only us old Pharts remember the web as it was... don't expect the elementary kids to do that... after all they've been brought up on the Google teat and G is as good as Britannica. (look it up if some don't get that reference!)

The web is changing... especially as far as Google is concerned: G is changing it their way. Bing/Yahoo (Bing first) is still making all effort to show the old web... the one based on word search, not "personalized" or "we know what you are thinking" or "we're not evil even if you are" results.

Back to the OP... if a site of value is FOUND then BOOKMARK it immediately. Google is losing things these days. Bing does a bit better (and I hope they continue). Bookmark it or lose the reference. No search engine can guarantee they can deliver the same results year in year out. That's an unreasonable expectation. Every site I've bookmarked since 1995 AND HAS NOT BEEN SHUT DOWN is still available. URL is URL... if it's there you'll get there, but if you didn't bookmark it and expect G or B or Y to find it... SOL in many cases... indexing changes, sites migrate, etc. etc. etc.

As I said earlier, I bookmark everything I find of value. I don't depend on search engines (use Bing exclusively now) to find it again. That's kinda/sorta the way the web has worked since day one.

This thread is a subset of a much larger and significantly greater problem: web sites and keywords no longer being found, or routed to lesser sites and keywords... which means many who monitor Webmasterworld are seeing disastrous drops in advertising dollars or no incoming trade for their products. With 1 billion webmasters working to make money hunting for the 1 to 10 top spots in the serps---and 99% gaming the system---is there much doubt things once found can't be found again?

Bookmark your faves when you find them.

Should have been doing that all along.

(I go back to paper libraries, cardex, all that "old stuff")