Google's now-terrible search engine results came up on Tumblr yesterday, along with a number of steps you could take to make sure Google's search results were somewhat more relevant. However, the underlying problem is Google. Not the website— the giant, multinational corporation. It doesn't matter if you found the secret formula to disabling search results from generative AI, search engine optimisation, or even time itself; your search is still being monitored by Google for marketing, law enforcement, and AI training purposes.
I personally use SearXNG and have never had a single issue with my searches. There are several things about SearXNG that are better than name-brand Google, which I shall now enumerate...
Aggregated search. SearXNG aggregates (gathers together) search results from most of the world's search engines, excluding ChatGPT. Some of the supported engines are Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Wikipedia, Invidious, and Mojeek; a complete list can be found in the "Engines" tab of the searXNG preferences menu.
Searches by proxy. Whenever you search for anything, SearXNG puts your request through a proxy server so that whatever receives it will have a difficult time tracing your search back to you.
Saves preferences by hash. Basic online security is always having Firefox clear your browser cache on quit. On services you can't login to, this can play havoc with your special preferences; but SearXNG lets you save your preferences as a cryptographic hash, allowing you to restore them all by simply bookmarking the URI with the hash in it. This can be done from the "Cookies" tab of the Preferences menu; just scroll down to "URL to restore your preferences in another browser" and bookmark the link it gives you (please note, you must save your preferences first).
Does not search with AI. The main reason why Google's and DDG's search results are such a puddle of grey goo now is their search engines primarily discard traditional metadata in favour of the slop that gloops out of the weighted-averages machine. SearXNG does not use the weighted-averages machine in its searches, providing you only with relevant results, even without changing any preferences. "But, wait, if it searches Google by proxy, doesn't that mean its results have AI in them?" Actually, no. As was demonstrated in the Tumblr post I mentioned, Google still indexes things by metadata, you just have to tell it to restrict its searches only to that. SearXNG conveys that to Google at search time, so you only get indexed results from your proxy searches.
The moral of the story here is that name-brand Google sucks cephalopod excrement and should not be used for anything, at any time, ever. For more resources on ditching Google from the other parts of your life, see How to Use a Computer, part 11.