I've found that this new wave of 'smart' search systems are actually making search results progressively worse. People complain that they can't find anything on Google alternatives, my experience is that search results are equally bad. These new systems start making things up "I bet he meant to search THIS" and there's no way to escape it.

All you get is ads and generic results any time you try to find anything out of the ordinary. I remember that if you were good at formulating your search query you could almost always find what you want. Instead they assume the user is stupid or just want to serve up an ad.