I've always had watch history off, but my searches now return a couple of pages of short form nonsense, before my actual results.
I've always had watch history off, but my searches now return a couple of pages of short form nonsense, before my actual results.
YouTube search is just broken. Has been for a long long long time. You get 3-4 relevant results and then it just shows you random unrelated crap.
It is better to use google to search youtube via site:youtube.com operator.
It's not broken from Google's perspective. The results are just optimized for their ad revenue rather than your viewing preference. Even the engagement hooks don't care what your viewing preferences are - just what they've calculated to optimize watch potential * ad revenue.
You've got to permanently block 1000s of "popular" channels. Then youtube starts working like it did in 2006 again.