I've also had several fights with google over my refinements.

If I search for 2 words, odds are stupidly high that most of the results will NOT include one of my two words. Thanks Google, for deciding I didn't really mean to type that.

I follow up with added quotes, etc to enforce what I actually typed, so there will be a lot of Google-induced churn.

Google has focused so highly on the peak that more and more searches - certainly the majority of mine - have been relegated to the long tail.