1. A method performed by one or more devices, the method comprising: identifying, by at least one of the one or more devices, a group of search result documents that are responsive to a search query; determining, by at least one of the one or more devices, a measure of staleness of a search result document in the group of search result documents; determining, by at least one of the one or more devices, whether a stale document is preferred for the search query, where determining whether a stale document is preferred for the search query includes: determining, based on selections of older documents over newer documents, whether a first document was previously selected over a second document in a set of search results relating to the search query or a similar search query, where the first document is ranked lower than the second document, and where the first document is older than the second document; identifying the search query as a search query for which a stale document is preferred when the first document was previously selected over the second document in the set of search results relating to the search query or the similar search query; generating, by at least one of the one or more devices, a score for the search result document based on: the measure of staleness of the search result document, and whether a stale document is preferred for the search query; and ranking, by at least one of the one or more devices, the search result document with regard to at least one other search result document, of the group of search result documents, based on the generated score.