Not OP, but I get completely trash results on a ton of technical questions no matter how I phrase it. Not a specific example, but if I’m having an issue with some niche distribution of Linux that requires a specific fix, it’ll instead insist on showing me the massive pile of results for the normal distros instead of the couple of links containing the answer I want.
For as shitty as Google has gotten, it’ll at least give you the one or two better hits before piling on the generic results.
It’s like DDG changes the query to get more results whereas Google will just run the damn search even if they stuff the results with ads and tracking.