On several occasions, when I’ve researched a topic that has just hit the news, search engines have shown me nothing but news articles on commentary on that event. Usually it’s 20 versions of the same syndicated article. Finding background information becomes nearly impossible. Google’s weighting heavily favors recently added or changed pages.

Fortunately, if you know Google’s options well, there are ways to get around this. They also work with Startpage, which is an independent privacy-protecting front end to Google. I recommend Startpage, if only to avoid Google’s diddling with your search results based on what it knows about you. Startpage recently dropped its advanced search page, but you can still do everything it let you do.
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