“If you added “-l” after the search term post-Florida, you got the unfiltered results.”
That was a mistake some people unfortunately made early on. The -sfssts just brought up the old algorithm. A comparison between those results and the post-florida results was the absolute proof their was no filter.
It’s not semantics, but the way some people use filter they are meaning algorithm. If you are a webmaster though the difference is a significant one. A filter presumes there is first a set of results determinded, and then those results are filtered to remove or significantly penalize some sites. An algorithm simply is the calculated end results. Google always filters the final algorithmic results, the most obvious way is by showing no more than two results from the same domain.
Put another way, a filter never boosts anything. You can see these changes are algorithmic in that when some sites go down, others rise dramatically. They don’t rise just because others have been removed.
A filter is a negative. It only “dislikes”. An algorithm dislikes but it also “likes” sites and boosts their ranking. So, it’s a big mistake to look at Google changes as ONLY removing things. Webmasters should be focusing on the stuff that Google is now specifically liking, like links to authoritative sites.
It’s not merely semantics to say there are two sides to this coin.
A similar concept is that some people think they are being penalized when insted they just aren’t getting the benefit from something. For example this site is probably benefitting from Google doing a better job figuring out the words in casino/affiliate/programs.com This does not mean that hyphenated domains are being penalized. It means non-hyphenated domains are getting a more level playing field now.