Ron Amadeo / Google
If you’re tired of Google’s AI brief extracting all the value from the web while simultaneously telling people to eat glue or grab their scissors and run, you can turn it off. Google says that the AI box at the top of its search results futureyou can’t turn it off, but that ignores how Google Search works. Many options are driven by URL parameters. So this means you can turn off AI Search with this one simple trick. (Sorry.)
The way to thwart AI search is to default to the new “Web” search filter that Google recently released as a way to search the web without Google’s alpha-quality AI junk, which is actually pretty good, showing only the traditional 10 blue links and giving you a clean (minus the ads) results page that looks like it’s from 2011. Unfortunately, there’s no way in Google’s UI to make “Web” search the default, and you have to dig into a dropdown of “More” options to switch to it. rear It’ll do the searching for you, and it’ll only take a few clicks.
If you check the URL after a search, you’ll see a long URL full of esoteric tracking and modal information. Place each search result URL parameter on a new line to make the URL easier to read.
https://www.google.com/search
?sca_esv=2d1299fed1ffcbfc
1 1 1 1 1 1 1
&sxsrf=ADLYWIKXaYE8rQyTMcGnzqLZRvjlreRhkw:1716566104389
&q=Overview of how to turn off AI
&uds=ADvngMiH6OrNXu9iaW3w… [truncated]
&udm=14
&prmd=vnisbmt
&sa=X
&ved=2ahUKEwixo4qH06aGAxW5MlkFHQupBdkQs6gLegQITBAB
1918
&bih=953
&dpr=1
Most of these only have meaning to Google’s internal tracking system, but the “&udm=14” line is what takes you to a web search. Add this to the end of your regular search and you’ll get a nice 10 blue link interface. Google may not be able to set this as a default, but if you have a way to automatically edit Google search URLs, you can create your own default. One way to edit search URLs is through proxy sites like udm14.com. This site is probably the biggest one to popularize this technique. However, proxy sites can read all of the query for search results if they want (the query is also in the URL), so it’s up to you to decide whether you trust this site or not.
This is a good way to make “web” search the default when searching from your browser’s address bar, without going through a third party. Chrome and Firefox have essentially the exact same UI for search settings. In Chrome, you can get there by right-clicking on the address bar and clicking “Manage search engines”. In Firefox, it might be a bit more work, as you have to enable a custom search engine first. First, type “about:config” in the address bar and hit enter, then search for “browser.urlbar.update2.engineAliasRefresh” and hit the “plus” button. Then,[設定]->[検索]scroll down to the Search Engines section and hit “Add.”
Neither browser allows you to edit an existing Google listing, so you’ll need to create a new search shortcut, name it Google Web, and use https://www.google.com/search?q=%s&udm=14 as the URL.
AI-free Google search.
Ron Amadeo
The third box in the search engine settings will be named either “Shortcut” or “Alias” depending on your browser, but either is fine if you plan to make this your new default search engine. If you don’t want this to be the default, the shortcut/alias allows you to selectively launch this search from the address bar by starting your query with the shortcut text. The description on udm14.com suggests “gw”, so if you type “should I eat gw rocks” it will launch a “Web” search. If you leave out the “gw”, it will likely launch Google’s AI idiot box and tell you rocks are tasty. To always use this search engine, find it in the list again after you’ve created it, click the menu button next to it and click “Make Default”. Now you don’t need a shortcut and anything you type in the address bar/search box will go directly to the web search.
While we’re playing around with Google URL parameters here, one more good parameter to add is “&tbs=li:1”. This will automatically start a “verbatim” search, where Google will use exactly what you searched for instead of fuzzy searching everything, ignoring some words, replacing words with synonyms, or doing whatever it can to weaken your search input. If you’re a Google newbie, the default fuzzy search is fine, but if you’re an expert who’s been honing your Google Fu skills since the good old days, the fuzzy search is just annoying. It’s just the default, so if you’re not seeing any results at all, you can hit the “Tools” button to switch between “verbatim” and “all results”.
Defaulting to “web” search will force you to use Google with only the 10 blue links, which feels like it’s taking the interface back to 2011, but be aware that it’s not bringing back Google search results. quality Fast forward to 2011 and search engines remain in a state of total submission to SEO spammers. This stop-gap solution is interesting, but the situation is getting worse, and at this point, we should all find another search engine that values and is willing to search the web, as opposed to Google, which increasingly seems to be sacrificing the web on the altar of AI.
Listing image: Aurich Lawson