They are nothing more than glorified news reporters anymore. Dishing you out national news, but never giving you details that you actually want.
For example: I was looking for a friend who died and had had a big impact on my life. Her name was Marta Q- and she was a professor of medicine at a state university. Pretty easy right? Wrong.
You see another Marta with the same name who was married to a very famous man committed suicide. She wasn't in the same state. She had no affiliation with the college. She had no affiliation with medicine. The search engine didn't care about any of that.
It just knew that if I was typing in Marta Q- this is the one I was looking for. F*** that.
Try https://searx.tiekoetter.com/
I just searched my deceased grandpa's name (he had an extremely common name), and I was able to find him using qualifiers.
Very useful, thanks ๐