Almost all searches on my independent search engine are now from SEO spam bots
You mention the "Dead Internet Theory" (not heard that phrase before!).I agree: the WWW Internet is dead, that is your problem. No-one visits websites anymore, everyone has moved to the 10 biggest websites and all data is now siloed there.If I want to search for something topical and relevant, I go to Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, HackerNews, Instagram, Google Maps, Discord etc.The general Internet is dead: it's just legacy content and spam.If you think it's bad for you, imagine what it is like for Google Search! Their entire business is indexing a medium which no longer has any relevancy. People complain that Google no longer delivers good results. But what can Google do? The "good content" is no longer available for them to index.Want to become rich? Make a search engine which indexes the fresh relevant data from the big siloed websites, and ignores the general dead Internet.