Search has degraded substantially in the past 5 years for reasons wholly, completely, and absolutely unrelated to SEO blogspam.
Google of 5 years ago didn't ignore words in almost every single query I made. Google of 5 years ago didn't constantly give me irrelevant garbage because they keep ignoring the words I use in my query.
This is a wholly separate issue from SEO crap. Ignoring search terms is 100% a Google issue and is 100% Google's fault!
Yes they did. It has been getting steadily worse since 2014 or so.