Indeed. Sometimes I think that if I had a text collection of a few sources (like HN), I could do a better job just greping them on my own PC. This is in regard to highly specific queries e.g. when debugging.
A trick I've found out, which strengthens my suspicion that the "bugs" are just stupid a/b tests:
If you get worse results than you usually get, try reporting it (or reporting basically any problem) on the page.
For me at least it seems that magically within hours the problem is now gone.
In the beginning I thought they had fixed the issue I reported really quick. But after seing this happen again (and again) I think a better explanation is they have a systen that opts you out of the tests once you report a problem.
Personally I have moved on to DDG (and I have one browser with Qwant as the default) but this trick helped me a few times.
