>>25548534
My experience has been pretty much identical. I was using Yandex after Google became shit and then when Yandex became shit I noticed that sometimes Google actually gives exact match in cases where others don't.
That hybrid model you mentioned seems to be the way these days. In difficult cases you have to try multiple services and/or hunt with the filename. These days it's also quite common that the content you are looking for comes from a deleted social media account and the stuff simply isn't available on the internet anymore. Then all you can do is hope that some hoarder(s) saved the stuff and that you find them and they are willing to share their archive.
The issue isn't just that search engines are nerfed to shit these days, it's also that massive amounts of data are simply disappearing from the internet all the time.
>>25547141
That's a bit outdated view actually. After Yandex also became shit at finding sources Google is a viable option sometimes. At least it's worth trying if/when other searches fail.