The Google results started going bad for me around when project humming bird came along. We need a distributed open data alternative that can be tweaked for your proferences transparently.

And we also need to start paying for the internet. The malvertising model we have now is unsustainable and crippling the network in favour of Facebook and Google.

> We need a distributed open data alternative that can be tweaked for your proferences transparently

Wonder if some organization like ACLU or the like take up such a project and release a paid version for power users.

I would pay for a personalized search engine. I think if the results are ad free I'd pay 10-15 per year (not much since Google is decent).

What's stopping you from doing it?

So I am not the only one that get pretty bad search results compared to the ones I used to get. What caused this shift?

The problem with this is that your definition of 'good results' and Google's definition of 'good results' are somewhat in conflict since you have different goals.

The current algorithm includes PageRank as its component.

Turning off the recaptcha harrassment of people trying to search repeatedly with refined terms would be a good start. But hey, now you can type a query while piss drunk and Google will understand, progress!