newsbin.com

I cancelled my search in groups and download subscription some time ago because I'd become frustrated by search results that were dead...

I decided to re-enable it and try again and it appears nothing much has changed. I perform a search, come up with a set of results and try to download something from the results and virtually everything throws back a '430: no such article'

I get that content changes and that there is a huge amount of data to catalogue for searching, but just what is the point of a search returning results for files that aren't actually out there?

I guess I've probably wasted another year's money for the search in groups facility (again!)

430 errors are from your news server. We catalogs posts as they were made. We don't go back and re-check after the fact. I mean what's missing depends on your news server. One server might have it and one might not.

430 means either your server deleted the files because they were asked by the "owners" or that the files are older than what your news server maintains.

Not every news server goes back in time as far as the search engine does too. The only one that I know of that's close is Usenetserver.