I think this depends on what you're searching for. For anything with a consumer appeal this is probably true. When searching for software-related information,

I think this depends on what you're searching for. For anything with a consumer appeal this is probably true. When searching for software-related information, however, the search result quality has largely stayed the same or got even better (from my personal point of view, at least). Yes, there are ad-riddled sites with notification requests, popups, newsletter subscriptions and whatnot but for the most part the results still consist of Stack Overflow answers, trustworthy sites (such as Mkyong.com or Baeldung for Java-related information) and official documentation.