All the very specific code errors I google have very relevant results but everything more generic is filled with useless marketing junk nowadays.

I notice this effect getting worse every year as well, only the ultra specific queries are still usable nowadays, everything else in the middle got spammed and the results are worthless.

See my reference to my "Rant HN" thread elsewhere in this thread because I couldn't disagree with you more. The more specific my code searches get, the worse the experience becomes. I put in a literal quoted phrase and Google doesn't have the decency to just tell me there are no results, it has to waste my time too by returning pages that don't have ANY of the keywords in the quoted phrase. What kind of search engine is that?

There's also another issue with some of those queries yeah. Due to the way Google is parsing keywords, any search with special characters is basically worthless even with quotes (which does include a lot of code search).

Agree. I can't remember the name but there's a huge media company which basically shares backlinks among its media properties so they almost always show up on the top spot. Even articles better suited to the search query are ranked lower than these popular publications.

That applies to any publishing company. I used to work at a major UK publisher. We launched a site in the entertainment space (very competitive)in 2007, and it was immediately high-ranked, because all the older properties linked to it systematically (i.e. in footers, etc.). I don't think much has changed in this regard, since then.