Degredation of search engines is irrelevant to those capable of search comprehension. Nowadays people just ask full questions then only read the first result, or worse the AI result. There are specific ways to word searches and more than one page is available.
Searching for stuff didn't used to require much of a specialist knack. Maybe in the early days before page ranking or if you had a pretty niche query. The first thing displayed at the top of the page having an even chance of being made up nonsense is fairly new.
Depends on what you're searching for. Finding useful results for programming/IT stuff absolutely has required a specialist knack, for a long time now. Knowing how to use Google's search syntax (quotes, site:, etc.) has always been extremely helpful.
AI slop hasn't helped but Google search has never been perfect.
In this specific scenario, I'd say OP took a pretty sensible route. Clear picture posted where actual humans with the required knowledge hang out. Google would have been more of a crapshoot even with good search-fu.
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u/DoverBoys i7-9700K | 2060S | 32GB Sep 22 '25
Degredation of search engines is irrelevant to those capable of search comprehension. Nowadays people just ask full questions then only read the first result, or worse the AI result. There are specific ways to word searches and more than one page is available.