sugarrae - 5:26 pm on Aug 12, 2005 (gmt 0)

>>> the nature of the sites coming up

Exactly. When the top 8 sites for a serp are all fortune 500 companies, with no anchor, flash sites and nothing but "big brand names" who don't rank in Google or MSN, followed by the "regular players" you always see, you know there's an issue.

Am I saying this hard coding makes the results look bad or irrelevant... no. The results are usually quite good if you are surfing the serp for the first time. But, if you are a time and time again user, they get stale and who wants to use a stale engine. I want to know I'm not missing the "new good" because they are trying to keep out the "bad".

That, and a search engine is algo based - if Y wants to become a directory again, by all means, but let me know that it is what I'm using when I'm searching. ;)