1. A method performed by one or more devices, the method comprising: obtaining, 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; 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 one of the search result documents based on the generated score.