I've always had watch history off, but my searches now return a couple of pages of short form nonsense, before my actual results.

YouTube search is just broken. Has been for a long long long time. You get 3-4 relevant results and then it just shows you random unrelated crap.

It is better to use google to search youtube via site:youtube.com operator.

Better to use Gemini to search YT, you can just talk to it what you want, and see the videos right there in the chat window. I used this to find well targeted music, it can also review artists and discuss about them not just play music.

It's not broken from Google's perspective. The results are just optimized for their ad revenue rather than your viewing preference. Even the engagement hooks don't care what your viewing preferences are - just what they've calculated to optimize watch potential * ad revenue.

You've got to permanently block 1000s of "popular" channels. Then youtube starts working like it did in 2006 again.

NEVER worked for me. I have always shorts shoved in every possible page, device and results, and I have watch history off since forever.