Hopefully that "results you removed" is not permanent, although from the looks of it, it is. Sometimes you use the same keyword, when searching for 2 different things.
Those are two separate issues. Altavista's index certainly got updated over time, so changes in the search results aren't that surprising.
I believe the issue OP is addressing is that even given an identical index, two different users might see to entirely different search results, as their individual search history is factored into the query.
Do the search again. We have two indexes, a shallow one for things we have never seen and a deep one for things people have searched for. The results have changed likely since your first search. This would not be an issue if we had only 15% new searches.
They kinda do, at least in the sense that they no longer appear to index the entire web, instead cutting off the long tail for just the things they'll actually return results for.
Doubt it, it's more likely that they want to maintain full control over results. They likely have certain results they don't want you to filter. Also, relevance can change over time. You might filter out something now that made sense to filter out now but not in the future after the site changed and got reindexed.
But if you want to loose credibility yet again and loose your investor money on a new search, go ahead, you do you
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