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It’s hard to imagine, given its popularity and entrenchment in modern society, but today’s Google search is very different from the same product just a few years ago.
The most obvious change recently has been the addition of generative AI search results, also known as “AI Overview.” Previously, it was an experimental option called “Search Generative Experience” that users had to select through Google Labs. The addition of these results – which are generated from whole cloth for each search using Google’s Gemini AI models – attempts to aggregate and filter out the most relevant and important information based on your search query.
Following its I/O conference last week, Google is now making this the default search experience in the US (and soon worldwide) to compete and offset the rise of competitors like Perplexity and OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
Nevertheless, many users have openly complained about Google Gen AI’s new search results, pointing out that they are often inaccurate – sometimes even dangerously inaccurate.
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Fortunately, there is a solution for those users who want to return to a “purer” and pristine Google search experience that is not marred by Gen AI results.
Google has added a new “Web” tab at the top of its search engine, removing all Gen AI results and even the older “Featured Snippets” that ripped text from web pages and reproduced it at the top of the search engine results page (SERP). It also appears that most ads/sponsored posts are being removed.
However, there is no way to keep this option as the default on Google, at least not officially. You have to search, see the AI results, and then tab each time.
While it can be cumbersome to navigate to this tab every time you search, my old colleague Ernie Smith of the blog Tedium has found a clever solution that some users are applauding.
As he writes:
“…Is there anything you can do to minimize the hassle of having to click the “Web” option on a menu every time?
The answer to this question is “yes”. Google doesn’t make it easy for you, as their URLs seem particularly cluttered with cruft these days, but by adding a URL parameter to your search – in this case “udm=14” – you can go straight to the web when you search. achieve results.“
As long as you set your default search engine in your browser or bookmark the following URL: “https://www.google.com/search?q=%s&udm=14,” you should actually be able to access the web. Gen AI free version of Google on every search.
On X, users were thrilled by Smith’s discovery and eagerly embraced it:
It will be fascinating to see how widely this work spreads. If enough people choose to go down this path, will Google reconsider making Generation AI’s aggregated search results the new standard and return to this cleaner and “cleaner” version of search – a list of “blue links”?
We will see.