I have basically the same experience of trying DuckDuckGo, getting useless results if the search is outside the domain of the handful of sites I already know, and then trying Google. But I find Google usually also returns useless sites.

ChatGPT is the only general-purpose search engine that seems to have any chance of producing a link that is both new to me and useful. Of course, I try not to use it too much, people say it’s bad for the planet or whatever.