Of late Google seems to give me the exact opposite of what I searching. So I type in something like
"What are the WRONG ways to do X"
and the results are
"Here are 10 great ways to do X"
Quotation marks do not seem to work for some reason.
Plus all the SEO spam. Entire categories of questions seem to be out of limits because the results are so suspect.
DDG is terrible at local results. I keep getting American results even when I mention a city and country.
The only downsides are that you have to sign up for their private beta, which takes a while, and that it will be subscription-based upon their official launch.
Or another approach: use multiple search engines + an anonymous proxy. Spread your searches among Qwant, Mojeek, Ecosia, Yacy, Swisscows, etc