Freshness is important, both because it saves people from wasting time, and it also shows that search engines are reflecting the current information available on the web. While Lycos deserves honors for its low score, it's AltaVista that should be most singled out. It combines one of the largest web indices with a relatively low stale link rate, an excellent balance. Unfortunately, a count of dead links from Yahoo was not included, and it could have been done. The percentage quite possibly would have exceeded HotBot bad score.
Numerous people complain about out of date sites, as well as listings, with the service.
Statistics about index size and freshness aside, the most important thing people want from a service is relevancy. That's difficult to quantify, because relevancy is subjective. Everyone has different expectations and searching styles. For this reason, most people should think of a search service like a pair of shoes. Try different ones on, and wear the one that fits best.