https://search.marginalia.nu/ is pretty awesome for getting human generated / small web content.

If I'm looking for people sharing my hyper-fixation https://aboutideasnow.com/ is excellent. https://searchmysite.net/ is a indieweb opti-in only tool with similar usecases but not much is there. Lemmy

https://www.mojeek.com/ I have as my default browser search to try to support as its the only real large index comparable to Google and Bing (DDG uses), but it falls short a lot.

DDG is my primary engine when I need something fast / the others don't work.

If I can't find it in the small web and regular search fails, I'll sometimes try the udm14 Google trick https://udm14.com/

After that its posting to the askfedi hashtag (or ask here)