You know how google search results can get really useless just a few pages in? And it says it found something crazy like 880,000 results? Imagine randomizing that.

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Unrelated I searched for "Penguin exhibits in Michigan". Of which we have several. It reports 880,000 results but I can only go to page 12 (after telling it to show omitted results). Interesting...

https://www.google.com/search?q=penguin+exhibits+in+michigan

If you think of it as like an old fashioned library or an old fashioned Blockbuster video store.

Sure you could read any book ever printed in the English language in the local library. They might have to get it in from the national collection or the big library in the city. But you ain't going to see every book in the local library. There is more than you could wish for and you will never read every book in the local library. But all the classics are there, the talked about new books are there (or out on loan, back soon). All the reference books that school kids are there, there is enough to get you started in any hobby.

Google search results are like that. Those 880,000 'titles' are a bit like the Library of Congress boasting how big it is, it is just a number. All they have really got for you is a small selection that is good enough for 99% of people 99% of the time. Only new stuff by people with Page rank (books with publishers) get indexed now and put into the 'main collection'.

Much like how public libraries do have book sales, Google do let a lot of the 880,000 results drop off.

It's a ruse!

I heard that they also filter results by some undisclosed parameters, like they don't show you anything that hasn't been modified in the last ~10 years, no matter how hard you try

Yeah, this is a real problem for research into older things that have no need to change. Google seems to think that information has a half-life. That's really only true in the social space. Truth is eternal.

Sure, but then whoever gets to populate the index chooses the winners and losers, because you could just stuff it with different versions of the content or links you wanted to win and the random ranking would should those more often, because they appear in the pool of possible results more often.

That would make it waaaay less useful to searchers and wayyy easier to game by stuffing results with thousands of your own results

I suspect just randomizing the first 20 or so results would fix most problems. The real issue is people putting effort in to hitting the first page, so if you took the benefit out of doing that people would look for other ways to spend their energy.

If you find nothing useful, just refresh for a new set. It would also help discovery.

Sounds like a great ux