So ddg is down, so I visit Google. It's been some years.
I just can't believe how poor it's results are, and how it's trying to suggest things it think I might also want (and failing miserably).
I just assumed ddg would be the lesser, but I use it for privacy. Turns out I'm wrong.
How long has Google been this bad?
Always.
I think SearXNG is best.
I keep seeing this and I tried it but I couldn’t get great results consistently. Maybe I need to spend some more time looking into it again
It may be the instance you used or something else I'm not aware of, but I always get great results.
The only thing is sometimes an instance dies and I need to find and start using another one, but it's not a big deal. You can find instances here.