I find one of the best ways to find interesting content on specific subjects using Google is now to start blocking all their top returns (a lot of SEO spam). This is somewhat tedious (lots of -site:seospam.com) and Google doesn't like automated queries. However, a few rounds of this often turns up interesting content down low in the search results. Just don't take what's on offer on page one of search results, basically.
Where it's gotten really bad is on news searches as Google either now has some kind of shitlist of independent news sites that it won't allow to show op on, for example, site:youtube.com searches - or, it's filtered through a guest list. It's hard to tell which strategy they're using, but news is definitely being heavily filtered based on very dubious propaganda-smelling agendas.
You might be interested in using uBlockOrigin and https://letsblock.it/filters/search-results to easily block these domains. In addition to your own domain list, you can use the community-maintained SO / github / npm copycat lists.
Where it's gotten really bad is on news searches as Google either now has some kind of shitlist of independent news sites that it won't allow to show op on, for example, site:youtube.com searches - or, it's filtered through a guest list. It's hard to tell which strategy they're using, but news is definitely being heavily filtered based on very dubious propaganda-smelling agendas.