I find it's the opposite: engines are so biased toward new content that older but still useful (or crucial) results are buried. I feel like an archeologist some days, carefully digging through the strata to find ancient hidden treasure.
You make like Kagi. It's a search engine that lets you - among other things - search old articles. It's a paid service though (but they offer a free 100 queries trial)
Any search engine I've ever used allowed me to filter for results from the past month/year/etc.
The real shower thought is that most people don't know how to use advanced search settings anymore when it used to be common knowledge you needed to find anything even slightly niche
Maybe they searched for “how to limit search results by date”, but the instructions they found were obsolete.
So set it to only display results from X past years.
I want more than Twitter results though.
this is just a symptom, bigger issue is new data being behind walls
Odd. I find it to be the exact opposite. If I want a real article, with thought put into it beside how to make it pop up as #1 in the search engine, I need to set the most recent date possible as prior to 2015 (sometimes even further back).
I suppose it depends on what you're looking for. News articles obviously have to be recent, and it's relatively difficult to bullshit your way into an informative news piece. Advice or DIY instructions though? You better search waaaay far back.
It is because of google's SEO algorithms. Old content has been around far more to rank up higher. And because people only click on first results. Newer content can't rank against websites with more authority. Sometimes changing the date filter helps.
Their seo scores go down though if the page doesn't regularly change whenever the Google bot revisits it though. As it means it is stagnant and no longer being updated.
In the past month I've seen mentioned on Lemmy, and downloaded an important article on global climate change, from the late 1800s (Eunice Foote - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eunice_Newton_Foote#%22Circumstances_Affecting_the_Heat_of_the_Sun's_Rays%22), and I'm glad to have come across it. The knife of time cuts in both directions.
I feel like this mainly happens with tech (the kind that's not super new and fancy)
Showerthoughts
A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
Rules
- All posts must be showerthoughts
- The entire showerthought must be in the title
- No politics
- If your topic is in a grey area, please phrase it to emphasize the fascinating aspects, not the dramatic aspects. You can do this by avoiding overly politicized terms such as "capitalism" and "communism". If you must make comparisons, you can say something is different without saying something is better/worse.
- A good place for politics is c/politicaldiscussion
- Posts must be original/unique
- Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct and the TOS
If you made it this far, showerthoughts is accepting new mods. This community is generally tame so its not a lot of work, but having a few more mods would help reports get addressed a little sooner.
Whats it like to be a mod? Reports just show up as messages in your Lemmy inbox, and if a different mod has already addressed the report, the message goes away and you never worry about it.