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.
Yeah, don't use Google for ANYTHING. Google got stupid about 5 years ago. It went from being a good information platform to a purely commercial platform. If, say, one were to Google the word "Ford" hoping to find information about the Ford Motor Co., what you get is page after page of Ford dealerships trying to sell you a Ford.
Nowadays I use FreeSpoke for all my searches.