I have been using Duck Duck Go for > 1 year. No problems at all. Sometimes when I get poor results from DDG I fall back to Google and most of the time get the same poor results. Use things like google in private mode, default your browser settings to erase history and cookies, use a VPN and restart the browser when done.
I sometimes use the Dogpile meta to punch up poor searches.
Google searches have turned into a joke.
I used to be able to search my own posts on FR. Fr gets perhaps a page now.