I stopped using DDG because whenever I search for information on a topic like "plumber's bread" all I get are the same 1500 sites serving the same top-10 lists of the same Amazon Affiliate links. Kagi neatly avoids all of that and serves me the dumb forum articles from 2006 that I'm looking for that describe what plumbers actually do when they want to stop up a wet pipe. This is a problem with nearly every ad-supported search engine. They all serve the same dumb top-10 lists and AI-authored blog articles about the same stuff ad-nauseum instead of inferring that I'm trying to research the answer to a question. The results all presuppose that I'm looking to buy something.

https://www.ecosia.org/search?q=plumber%E2%80%99s+bread&addo...

afaik Ecosia is a blend of Google and Bing now while they work on their own engine

How does this compare?

I never had this experience with Kagi, sadly. I know a lot of people here love it but I found it had the same problems as Google.

I wonder if it's a regional thing.

I searched for “plumber’s bread” on DuckDuckGo and this was the 3rd result which seems to match what you’re looking for - https://www.finehomebuilding.com/forum/plumbers-bread-sandwi.... I do see the other kind of results you’re talking about too, though.