Google used to have a deny/block list. But such lists are obviously very advertising unfriendly, since the companies paying for placement and running the most ads are most likely to be blocked.

They have one, it's just centralised and blocks the good sites.

I honestly love Kagi, it's like every single "it would be nice if Google gave me feature X instead of being greedy" in one place

Exactly. And SmallWeb is awesome too