This might be very anecdotal, but in my case, outside of tech/programming topics, I feel like google results are getting more and more generic. For example, a while back I had some changes in my life and had to fill lots of paperwork. I had various administrative issues regarding 2/3 specific forms. When I searched for people that ran into these issues, I found many helpful link/forums etc... Fast forward these past few months, had to fill the same forms and ran into some of the same issues. But now and all I am finding is stuff like links to the forms, links to the administration websites, links to how to fill the form and so on. Maybe it is a SEO issue, but overall I feel like I am struggling more and more to get useful search results to very specific questions. But then again, sample size of 1.

Search is one of those areas where I find people have very strong but very subjective opinions for some reason.

It's like every DDG related HN thread always has these comments:

- I moved to DDG X years ago and it's [fine|better than Google]

- I can't find anything on Google anymore

- Here's a search where I didn't find what I want.

It's reached the point that I just immediately tune out whenever someone brings up anecdotes. There just seems to be so much confirmation bias.

I mean no disrespect here. This is generally true. Anecdotes just don't mean anything but for some people tech people love them when it comes to search.

I think this is one of those areas where aggregate statistics do not line up with the personal experiences of a majority of the population to such a degree that they are tossed out as unreliable. See also: the stunning ineffectiveness of saying "but the unemployment rate is only 3%".

For that matter, is there any more objective data about the quality of search results over time or are anecdotes all we currently have?

SEO has gotten so bad. One other factor was the majority of the old internet was hand made. Someone took the time to either build the page from scratch or to type it in to some blog software. While now when you search for something very particular, you get pages with identical keywords but you click on them and they are auto generated and show generic content not exactly what you wanted.

It would be an almost impossible task to filter these out because they are specifically generated to look exactly like the content you are looking for.