Like, if I'm troubleshooting something
- search the error message at startpage.com, duckduckgo, yandex, searx, in that order, going maybe 5 pages deep, trying date filtering and advanced search operators (AND, OR are advanced to me lol)
- search the error message at reddit
- search the error message on twitter
- ?
Should I be searching matrix rooms, or other online forums, or other non indexed pages I don't know about?
It seems like the quality of general search results, over the last 6 months I'm gonna say, have gone to dogshit. Loads of results on startpage that have your search term embedded in them somewhere, but are spam, for example.
100%
About 4 years ago google had an option to search only forums for a search term - it was a drop down option like date or whatever. It was the most useful thing about the whole google ecosystem. The ability to get search results exclusively from actual human discussions.
They removed this function and ignored & managed the massive outcry at the time.
There are only nefarious reasons for removing the function imo.