The web is also far worse than it used to be.

Content was so much better 15-20 years ago, when Google’s tooling was also better.

99% of content creators create content for a single reason: to monetize it. Usually through ads.

The end result is that most content, even if decent, is ruined by ads.

I miss the days of personal blogs made by professionals. They didn’t really want to impress the general public but instead their peers. Such a great time. No long prologues, no dumbing down, no politics, just pure facts and opinions about their own field.

Twenty years ago, there was more than a dozen websites that people went to.

At this point, what percentage of searches are just end up with the user clicking on Amazon, Reddit, or Wikipedia? So much of the other content is low-effort slop, even before AI.

Agreed. It actually is pretty awful now. Unfortunately, I still find it better than the alternatives (chiefly Bing/DDG). Every time I want to try out DDG, I just find it doesn't quite get what I want either, and Google does just a bit better.

Try https://www.startpage.com/, https://search.brave.com/, https://kagi.com/ or https://github.com/searxng/searxng.

You.com used to have really good search, but it looks like they have veered off into the AI chat space instead.

searxng is a self hostable meta search engine that allows you to basically just use the best search engines and easily switch between them.

You should give kagi a whirl I rarely need to go past page 1 or even the first result for most queries.