[anenefan]

You are not mistaken. DDG search has degraded considerably the last year or so.

As a recent example, I needed to quickly find the zone b tax offset for tax this year. (In Australia.) I note their search today with similar queries is behaving in a manner that most would consider passable (still no result that is going to satisfy what I was after then) - but when I searched a few weeks ago, no matter if I put 2025 or zone b in quotes, were the search results getting any more specific ... google I might mention, failed just as badly. In the end -- yandex for the win, and their first page of results, the first three I thought were hopeful, which got me confidently close enough to the simple bit of information I needed.

I feel sorry for those who haven't noticed how lacking search engines have got the last few years and I recently explained to a youngster who thought it's got just so good ... it's like being out at night looking at the stars and ... marvelling at the handful of bright stars, as well as the multitude of lights from their city's buildings and street lights ... never realising that once if they'd looked up there'd be hundreds of stars easy to see.