Im encountering alot of AI created websites that explain concepts like "side effects of X pill" (a recent example) and there was basically no real medical websites in the top results, Just clearly AI using thousands of words to say nothing that I cant trust.

I was considering locally hosting a search engine to circumvent my need for them entirely. Search engine optimization seems like a nightmare, if they were trying to give me useful results. So im not sure if that would be a spend 5 hours to save 5 minutes situation.

As you and others said, Its been getting worse for years so its probably just a coincidence that its also profitable for AI.