I think in this context, saying that it's not a thing that google doesn't like old content just means that google doesn't penalize sites as a whole for including older pages, so deleting older pages won't help boost the site's ranking.

This is not the same as saying that it doesn't prioritize newer pages over older pages in the search results.

The way it's worded does sound like it could imply the latter thing, but that may have just been poor writing.

"poor writing" is the new "merely joking guys!"

"Taylor Swift before:2010"

With archive search, the News section floats links like https://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/09/arts/music/09cara.html

That Googler here. I do use Google! And yeah, I get sometimes people want older content and we show fresher content. We have systems designed to show fresher content when it seems warranted. You can imagine a lot of people searching about Maui today (sadly) aren't wanting old pages but fresh content about the destruction there.

Our ranking system with freshness is explained more here: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ranking...

But we do show older content, as well. I find often when people are frustrated they get newer content, it's because of that crossover where there's something fresh happening related to the query.

If you haven't tried, consider our before: and after: commands. I hope we'll finally get these out of beta status soon, but they work now. You can do something like before:2023 and we wouldn't show pages from before 2023 (to the best we can determine dates). They're explained more here: https://twitter.com/searchliaison/status/1115706765088182272