Fuck AI

A lot of search engines are worse and I’m guessing it’s partially because the web is just bloated with trash now.

That's sadly a big part of it. Other is that search engines in general are worse today as everything apparently needs to be AI. Google spesifically has gotten worse over the years, but it's not alone. And that indirectly affects other engines, like duckduck, which at least partly uses other engines at the background.

But with DDG bangs are pretty neat. If you don't find what you're looking for via DDG search just add '!g' to the query and you'll get same search from Google. Or pick from "a few" other engines with their own bangs.