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.
!w Wikipedia
!imdb IMDb
!gi Google images
there’s tons more. if ddg is the default search engine these bangs save you the time to go to the site first and click the search bar. basically changing your default search into a specific search.