It's not just the old web. Google's results for political content or content with political implications have become increasingly strange in the past couple years. I noticed this when trying to recall the story of a false rape accusation that occurred on my college campus when I was a student. This saga consists of three articles:
a) initial reporting of the reported rape](https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2012/09/cornell-police-inve...)
b) [a police statement that they had irrefutable video evidence that the initial report was false ](https://cornellsun.com/2012/11/28/cornell-police-report-of-a...)
c) [an article defending the school's policies on sexual assault in light of a and b](https://cornellsun.com/2013/02/25/after-false-report-cornell...).
All three of these articles are impossible to find unless you search for exactly the right thing.
For example, if you search for "Cornell Police: Report of Attempted Rape on Campus Was False" on Google (the exact title of the second article), you find it. But, if you search for any variation (e.g. "Cornell Police: False Report of Attempted Rape on Campus") - the later articles (b and c) are impossible to find.
I've never been able to find a satisfactory explanation for why the discoverability on these articles has been turned to zero. I think that there are some odious websites devoted to covering false rape accusations, and these articles may be inheriting the low reputation of the publications that link to them. Or, perhaps the hosting website (student newspaper) is doing something to de-rank the stories. In all cases though, it seems wrong that in response to a query "cornell trolley bridge false rape accusation 2012", Google's top results would be "Why false rape accusations are rarer than you think"
For example, if you search for "Cornell Police: Report of Attempted Rape on Campus Was False" on Google (the exact title of the second article), you find it. But, if you search for any variation (e.g. "Cornell Police: False Report of Attempted Rape on Campus") - the later articles (b and c) are impossible to find.
I've never been able to find a satisfactory explanation for why the discoverability on these articles has been turned to zero. I think that there are some odious websites devoted to covering false rape accusations, and these articles may be inheriting the low reputation of the publications that link to them. Or, perhaps the hosting website (student newspaper) is doing something to de-rank the stories. In all cases though, it seems wrong that in response to a query "cornell trolley bridge false rape accusation 2012", Google's top results would be "Why false rape accusations are rarer than you think"