I used to really hate how Google is now, so I switched to DDG. But now since DDG can't find shit I'm looking for and completely disregards what I enter into the search box, I all of a sudden find Google magical again. It's like "wow, some of these results are actually relevant!"
I've found Kagi to be pretty good. Yes, it's a subscription service but if you can afford a few bucks a month it's probably worth it.
The reason why it's a subscription service is that that way they don't have to rely on ad views for income, meaning they don't have an incentive to show you bullshit results just to squeeze money out of you
The yellow hint of "the thing I wanted" without the actual thing I wanted showing accurately describes my experience. Maybe I'll find the thing if I scroll down far enough... Maybe.
I fell victim by clicking on the first result from google search which was a sponsored ad that was a phishing fake website that caused me to lose all my money at the time. I still wish I could sue them for it to this day. I have all evidence for it too.
To this day btw, google still sponsors and shows scam and phishing websites as first link.
often the result is not even there, because one of my search terms has a similar written word that is more common, so google searches for that instead. puzzled, because I skipped one screen downwards where the real results start and all results are garbage, I press ctrl+f, input a search word and lo and behold, it takes me back to the search box and the next ctl+f hit is under it where google wrote " Showing results for {word I didn't enter}".