[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.

[daveguy]

It's not broken from Google's perspective. The results are just optimized for their ad revenue rather than your viewing preference. Even the engagement hooks don't care what your viewing preferences are - just what they've calculated to optimize watch potential * ad revenue.

[asdff]

It is better to use google to search youtube via site:youtube.com operator.