Way, way worse. There was a time you could force Google to only return pages with a specific term by wrapping it in double quotes (or further back, prefixing with a plus). This was useful when trying to learn about a specific error message/code. Now, it's a total crapshoot, and you may not get a single useful result at all.
Came here to say this. I have noticed this increasingly in the last few weeks, constantly getting 1st page results with the exact-match term struck through and semi-relevant-but-not-really results. Struggling to think of motivation for why this would be. Or is it a byproduct of shifts elsewhere.
