If any of the alternative search engines would offer this and a feature to block pages with affiliate links--like those "review" sites--I would be happy to pay for them. They need to offer ways to customize the search experience.
It is possible to agree that content creators should be paid and that ads are bad. Substack, for example, allows you to pay and doesn't have ads. Ads are one business model, not the only one.
Thanks to the magic of modus tollens, absence of evidence can indeed be evidence of absence. "A 100kt nuclear bomb just went off in your front yard!" Me, looking out the window, nope. It depends, of course, on the argument being made. It could be true in some cases.
As cliches go this one is better than "you can't prove a negative"--not true. At least the "evidence of absence" one makes you think about causality and the nature of evidence.
"The point of experts is they have thought about a field more and are better at making sound arguments in that field."
This is an excellent point. It is so good that I think it may serve as the definition of an expert: An expert is someone who is better at making sound arguments in that field. Sound arguments being what matters and not the person making the argument, just as the calculations matter more than the mathematician.