[quaintdev]

Just pause watch history and it will disable shorts recommendation. The only shorts you will see will be from your subscribed channels.

[jarvist]

I've always had watch history off, but my searches now return a couple of pages of short form nonsense, before my actual results.

[malfist]

YouTube search is just broken. Has been for a long long long time. You get 3-4 relevant results and then it just shows you random unrelated crap.

[subscribed]

NEVER worked for me. I have always shorts shoved in every possible page, device and results, and I have watch history off since forever.