Oh god, yes this too. All the sponsored location spam drives me crazy. I love when I zoom in to a location and it doesn't mark ANY of the shops besides STARBUCKStm
It has definitely been getting worse over years, but I specifically meant the last couple of weeks. I could still find what I needed between all the garbage.. now I can't even find it after adjusting the search multiple times.
If you can't do better, then at least add some cute cat pictures in it. At least then I'll feel a crumb of joy with every wasted effort!
You honestly though the most used search engine has been abandoned by everyone? Maybe share what you're using instead of just being pretentious?
Aside from DDG, these are all new to me. I'll take a look this week, thank you.
I've been swapping around search engines too, but they still seem bad. I always end up back at Google just because I know how to manipulate the search terms better.
I've used Kagi's free trial. I'd turn to it when nothing else was helping and it did really well, but recently it hasn't been helping either. It's probably still fine for most things, but I'm often searching niche developer/programming things that are too burried under SEO/AI spam to find anymore.
Ooo I haven't heard of this, thank you! The amount of garbage they've added is absurd.
I know it's been getting worse over time, but I could still find what I needed after some digging.
Recently it's been like 10 minutes of adjusting search terms, still getting completely useless or irrelevant results, and me just giving up afterwards. Other search engines seem just as bad.