Search engine results are truly terrible (Maurycy's blog)

Search engine results are truly terrible

2026-05-15

A few months ago, I had the displeasure of trying to use the modern web without an ad-blocker.

Even though it's is ubiquitous among computer nerds, ad blocking is quite rare even in other technical fields.<br>This got me wondering how search engines perform without all the tricks people do to get better results.

As a test, I wrote a few queries for... common software:

ad blocker

... obscure, but easy to find information:

What is the lowest K-alpha emission energy of Molybdenum?

... and few normal(-ish) questions:

What photodiode circuit should I use?

How do airplane wings work?

Why are brushed motors most efficient at high speeds?

Asking a search engine questions is almost never the best way to find good information, but it's what I've seen a lot of people do.<br>To replicate the experience of a normie/victim I made sure to include the AI summary, sponsored results and info boxes:

Ad blockerMolybdenumPhotodiodeWingsMotors<br>GoogleBadOkCrapOkCrap<br>BingBadOkCrapOkCrap<br>KagiCrapOkBadOkCrap<br>DDGOkOkBadOkCrap<br>MarginaliaCrapCrapCrapCrapOk!<br>ChatGPTGoodGoodBadCrapCrap

Tests done on 2026-05-07

TLDR;<br>No tool produced consistently good results.<br>This isn't a matter of my standards being to high:<br>good results for all these queries exist on the web, but they all failed to find them.

They had a real problem with returning vaugely related blogspam.<br>Having a good result in the top 3 was fifty-fifty.

For the ad blocker and molybdenum, ChatGPT was able to produce a good answer, but<br>it's responses were deeply flawed or outright incorrect for the other three questions...<br>largely because it was rephrasing the same spam that tripped up all the others.

Marginalia generally did very poorly, but it was the only one to perform decently on the motor question:<br>All the others returned surface-level AI slop, while it found a nice writeup on motors that answered the question.

Related:

https://www.cs.rochester.edu/users/faculty/nelson/courses/csc_robocon/robot_manual/motor_drivers.html:<br>That write up.

Grading scale:

Good: First result is correct and not spam.<br>For the questions, I'm not looking for a text book:<br>a single sentence explanation is perfectly fine provided that it explains the right thing and holds water.

Ok:<br>Some spam/incorrect/incomplete/irrelevant pages, but a good result can be found in the first three links.<br>Just to be clear, this is not a good outcome: it means the top result was wrong or spam.

Bad:<br>Same as ok, but using the first five links.

Crap: First five results are all wrong, spam or spammy scams.

Five might not sound like a lot, but given the amount of junk in a modern search engine interface,<br>it's really quite rare for people to scroll pass those first five results.

ChatGPT isn't a search engine, so I ranked it on correctness of the answer:

Good = Correct and well explained.

Ok = Correct, but not very good.

Bad = Incomplete.

Crap = Wrong or incomplete to the point of being harmful.

Detailed results: ad blocker

For ad blockers, I'll only accept uBlock Origin or DNS based solutions.<br>In order to work, an ad-blocking extension needs a huge amount of access to your browser:<br>it's not a good idea to take chances.

uBlock Origin is free, open source (so you can see what it's doing) and very effective:<br>Paying a difficult to cancel subscription for a inferior product is not a good idea.

A lot of those shady extensions also have identical pricing plans, which make me think they are slop-ware pumped out by one guy.<br>I don't have proof that they are scams in the strict sense, but it is rather suspicious.

Google:

"Ad block - [...] - Chrome web store":<br>Charges a $40/year subscription, allows "non-intrusive" advertising and collects data.

"AdBlock Plus": Same deal.

Infobox linking to https://getadblock[.]com/:<br>The usual.

"Get AdBlock": ditto.

"uBlock Origin":<br>Finally, a good result. Just in time to save google from the "crap" tier,<br>but I doubt it's early enough to stop someone from being scammed.

Verdict: bad.

Bing:

"Adblock Plus": Same as google's #2.

Infobox with "https://www.windowscentral[.]com/how-block-ads-and-trackers-xbox":<br>an ad-filled blog-spam site.<br>It does provide reasonable instructions, but good luck reading it without an ad blocker.

A second infobox linking to "Adblock vs Adblock Plus - PC Guide":<br>an ad-laden blog-spam comparing two sub-par extensions. (both allow "acceptable ads")

"uBlock Origin":<br>Good, but why is it so far down?

"AdBlock — block ads across the web":<br>The usual scammy adblocker extension.<br>Very similar to google's top four results.

Verdict: bad.

Kagi:

"Adblock Plus" same as google's #2

"Ad block - [...] - Chrome web store": same as google's #1

"Adblock Plus": Yet another shady adblocker with a $40/year subscription

"The Ethical Ad Blocker" (infobox):<br>A blog post describing an ad-blocker that blocks access to any websites that have ads,<br>which prevents...