I use DuckDuckGo Lite in Librewolf with Ublock and NoScript (amongst other addons). That combination used with ddg's !bangs got me covered. No ads, not even image search (just go to ddg directly for that), just content.

I've used searx through a docker container, and it's a strong 2nd choice, but ddg lite is just easier to set up and gives better results imho.

All said, an LLM like a local Llama and ChatGPT, can fill the gaps for very specific searches. Sadly, the modern internet takes a lot of savvy to navigate quickly and effectively.

There's a very good reason so many are typing in "reddit" at the ends of their searches, and that's if their not using Chat GPT to just get them to the answer faster, and using much more computational resources to do so...it's a big cluster fuck.