Ask Slashdot: Alternative to "Intelligent" Google Search?

Captain Chad writes: I first heard about Google here on Slashdot. At the time I was using AltaVista for web searches, but Google immediately proved its superiority. Now 20+ years later I struggle with Google's latest system. It appears to be interpreting the perceived intent of my search request instead of using the very specific keywords I provide. I'm often getting results that aren't on the same topic as what I'm looking for, and adding more keywords seems to make it worse. Even using double quotes doesn't help much any more. Google Search has become too "intelligent" for me to use effectively.

So I'm looking for a replacement search engine, one that searches for what I tell it to search for, like Google used to do. With that in mind, what search engine(s) do you recommend?