I don’t know how much of it is specifically Google making their search engine worse vs the web being flooded with AI generated SEO trash that’s intended to keep you on the page for a few minutes when all you need is a simple one word or one sentence answer.

It’s definitely some mix of both though because I found getting concrete answers a lot simpler a decade or two ago just by using quotes around key phrases in conjunction with what seemed to be actual operator keywords like “OR”. I personally don’t think any of that behaves the same way these days, but I have no concrete proof of this so maybe I’m just imagining things.

I’m slowly coming to terms that the web portion of the internet is a lost cause as AI, bots, and bad actors infiltrate and abuse more and more of it.