I've noticed this as well - I find I have to quote words more often to force the search in the right direction.

When that doesn't work, I type the desired word three times after the search e.g. "Old books for sale old old old" -if, say, all the results are dominated by new books due to "books for sale" being so strongly attached to those websites.

If that doesn't work I type "BING" and don't return for a while.

If Google's algorithm doesn't keep track of frustrated searches for BING I will eat my hat.

Good one. I will use it too. When I can't find what I want in Google, I'll search "bing" and click the first link.

if I correctly understand what you're up to, it's brilliant. this pattern of leaving "well f* you then!" breadcrumbs for behavioral-pattern matchers of the future is something I'm quite fond of doing myself.

here's hoping some future intelligent system will be a lot smarter and more capable of tracking the breadcrumbs of my evidently-permanent log-trail of passive-aggression than the human UX-dillholes who are currently running things.

Same for me... if only they would bring back the + operator, it would make this a little less painful...

At what point does google admit g+ has failed and stop crippling their primary search tool to accommodate it? I know "you are the product" etc, but if the tool becomes frustrating to use and someone else can provide a better user experience, it's going to cut into those ad dollars.