I’ve been using it as my main search engine for around a year now. I accidentally used google today to look up “best screwdriver sets” and the results were all ads instead of results with screwdriver set reviews. I put the same thing in DuckDuckGo and immediately got relevant results.
Have you tried open street map? The geography nerds building that have a surprisingly up to date and high quality map of the rural midwestern region I live in so you might be pleasantly surprised
Which is getting worse now too.
It now searches "related" locations to what you searched for to show you more bought ads for locations instead of what you looked for originally. Get ready for the slow crawl of enshitification of maps now too.
Their maps are pretty bad, there are better alternatives although it can depend on your region. Navigation and POI search wise though they still seem the best to me.
Interest of avoiding Google's ad platform which is arguably more invasive you should use a browser in search engine that is not developed by Google thus use duck duck go. I mean it's at least tangentially related.