Well, yes, DuckDuckGo is not Google. You have to accept that. Not just surface-level, but for real.

What made this easy for me is that Google is also no longer Google. Ever since it started basically ignoring my actual search query, I stopped using it. I used to be very good at using Google, too.

DuckDuckGo is quite bad at times, yes. But then, so is Google. If I need to find something I cannot put into search terms, LLMs are helpful. From my trial experience I would say Kagi is also a capable search machine, for some niches.