Marco’s list of types of Google queries and which ones are worthless these days is completely accurate. He concludes:

In other words, it’s now nearly impossible to find good results for many commonly asked types of queries.

Part of what exacerbates this is the apparent explosion recently of cheap-“content” sites that try to answer every search query ever asked. Like affiliate-marketing spam, much of it seems to be generated by humans (technically — I wouldn’t classify them as such), but it’s functionally useless: sites like About.com, eHow, and countless clones with .info domain names that promise to address every niche question and informational topic, but whose content lacks all quality and substance.

I’ve noticed this too. I was searching the other day for how to fix scratches on a wood door, and all the top results were copy-pasted http://whatever.info garbage. The only useful information came from calling Dad.

On the plus side, I guess I talk to my family more often. Maybe this isn’t so bad.