The results were probably never perfect, but in the last 2-6 years search results have become blantly manipulated...searching for pretty much any political topic (and even other topics) always yields articles from NYT, WaPo as well as 'fact checkers' which are all spreading blatant propaganda and falsehoods.
In the same time they've nornalized mass censorship on major social media platforms where a large amount of (particualrly political) speech occurs nowadays (that in itself is a big problem), to the point of having an uncensored rival's servers pulled.
I've also seen dissident blogs hosted on WordPress and Blogger get shut down.
Creepy, very creepy: had to be google since it was over 20 yrs ago. I was trying to find shoes made in the USA or at least not in China; searched for girls shoes, got returned lots of porn sites!! Obviously those were pushed to the top. Sick.