I'm seeing very similar issues. Google seems to heavily favor sending people to the sites with the highest content volume instead of the highest quality content.
The worst thing is that content creators are manipulating this to build content farms full of low quality content and overwhelming ad volumes.
I miss the old web where Google was really great at finding that one guy's blog post that was actually useful.
That's a tall order - Google doesn't know the quality of the content, only how popular it is. Right now it's based on data science pooled from existing search result clicks, but originally it was based on the amount of backlinks each site had - so instead of user viewership and satisfaction, it was dependant on the amount of nerds at the time who had already found the site/article useful. The internet has grown enough to mean that everyone else vastly outweighs nerds in terms of backlinks and clicks for any particular topic.
The worst thing is that content creators are manipulating this to build content farms full of low quality content and overwhelming ad volumes.
I miss the old web where Google was really great at finding that one guy's blog post that was actually useful.