it appears that the SEO optimum is "repeat common search terms but in natural language" and so now every google result for thing like "fix coil whine" or "toilet not filling" are FAQ style posts by domains you've never heard that are like:

How to fix coil whine?
...
What causes coil whine?
..
Can coil whine cause damage?
...
etc

the search situation is dire because sure "toilet not filling" doesn't tend to have misinformation, but if any schmuck can register a 4 dollar domain and get gpt2 to blast out some misinfo that the google algo loves and make bank on advertising (also sold by google) then how am I supposed to trust google when I ask it about things that tend to have common misconceptions or falsehoods like pest remedies or medical symptoms?

here's a hint. if you're on a page you found through google, ctrl+f for the phrase "Amazon Services LLC Associates Program"

I wish archive.org got a full-book search engine like hathitrust

if we assume from now on that google can't source good info, it may be time to move to a "have a collection of reputable sites and use their internal search, or use site:domain"

before you suggest duckduckgo, I don't think their search quality is that much better. I think this is an issue affecting all search engines

maybe the right path is to use a search engine that lets you set a domain whitelist

a search engine that only searches wikipedia, hathitrust, archive.org, github.com, and maybe stack exchange. that would be hype. any other domains?

@SuricrasiaOnline i know https://kagi.com is trying to be normal but i haven't used it enough to know