I suspect that this is the direct result of AI generated content just overwhelming any real content.
I tried ddg, google, bing, quant, and none of them really help me find information I want these days.
Perplexity seems to work but I don’t like the idea of AI giving me “facts” since they are mostly based on other AI posts
ETA: someone suggested SearXNG and after using it a bit it seems to be much better compared to ddg and the rest.
It doesn’t really, it’s just that human activity on the internet is more and more taking place on platforms without any search indexing. 20 years ago, internet forum are where you’d go for advice online. Nowadays, it’s more and more becoming discord servers and similar, which just aren’t indexed by internet search.