How to Remove AI Preview from Your Google Searches – Decrypt

Once upon a time, in the late 20th century, there was a search engine that indexed the open, decentralized web and helped you find the information you were looking for. After showing you an ad or two, you will be redirected to the source.

Since then, ads have become more abundant and harder to differentiate from content, and that content has been polluted by SEO-optimized websites looking to show you even more ads. But today, thanks to the explosive proliferation of AI, even the meaning of the verb “Google” is changing. Instead of sending you to an information source, the tech titan now provides you with answers instantly: no need to go elsewhere or see someone else’s ads!

Except that these answers turned out to be unreliable, even dangerous.

Is it possible to go back in time, before the “AI preview” and “generative search experience”, and just see a ranked list of links instead of the AI ​​rewrites and search spam? With a few tweaks and hacks, the answer is yes.

Un-Google Google in Chrome, Edge, Brave

For better or worse, Google is also behind the world’s most popular web browser engine: Chromium. In addition to serving as the basis for Chrome, it also sits behind Microsoft’s Edge browser and alternative browsers like the privacy-focused and crypto-savvy Brave. Fortunately, this means that the same settings can get you closer to clear search results in these browsers and on the platforms that run them: Windows, macOS, and Linux.

The following change to Chromium’s settings makes Google’s newly separated and likely deprecated “Web” search section (you know, the way we understood search worked years ago) the default search type .

For Chromium on PC and Mac (Chrome, Edge, Brave, etc.):

1. Click the three dots at the top right of the browser window, then select “Settings.”
2. Choose the “Search Engine” option.
3. Search for “Site Search” and click “Add.”
4. Enter “Google Web” as the name and “www.google.com” as the shortcut.
5. In the URL box, enter:

   {google}/search?udm=14&q=%s

6. Click “Add” to add the rewritten Google site to the list.

There is also a browser extension called Hide Google AI Previews that simplifies this process, but there is a risk that Google will ban it.

A compromise – without eliminating AI but getting less “optimized” search results – is to perform Google searches in “Incognito” or privacy mode, which eliminates trackable cookies.

For mobile Chrome on Android and iOS:

Unlike desktop, you can’t manually configure a custom search engine as explained above, but there is a workaround, courtesy of TenBlueLinks. This is a free, simple, transparent and verifiable hack that will show “tenbluelinks.org” as the source, but all search queries will be sent directly to Google, not the TenBlueLinks website.

1. Visit TenBlueLinks.org.
2. Open a new tab and search for anything in Google.
3. Click the three dots at the top right of the browser window, then select “Settings.”
4. Select “Search Engine,” then choose “Google Web” in the “Recently Visited” section.

For Firefox on PC or Mac:

Firefox users can download an extension called UDM14 to add the above custom search engine tweak that abandons Google AI:

1. Download and install the extension.
2. Go to “Settings,” “Search,” then “Default Search Engine.”
3. Select the extension and set it as your default search engine.

For Firefox on iOS or Android:

1. Install the Firefox web browser on your phone, if you don’t already have it.
2. Go to “Settings,” “Search,” then “Default Search Engine.”
3. Tap “Add search engine”.
4. Complete the fields as follows:
   • Name: Google (Web)
   • Search string URL: google.com/search?udm=14&q=%s
5. Click “Save”.
6. Select Google (Web) from the menu.

For Safari on Mac:

If you use Safari, Google Search, as configured by Google, is the default search. You have two options.

The first is simple:

1. Go to the App Store and download another web browser.

Another solution is a workaround for those who absolutely must use Safari, and is provided by Twitter user @ChookMFC. This involves running a script that checks your Google searches every two seconds and automatically adds the term “&udm=14” if it detects one.

“It’s like going back in time about 5-10 years (in all the best ways),” he says.

The script can be found here.

For Vivaldi on PC:

With this niche browser, the solution is quite similar to Chrome users and consists of setting up a personalized URL:

1. Go to “Settings”, then “Search”.
2. Click the plus button at the bottom left of the dialog box to add a new search engine.
3. Name the new item “Good Google” and give it the nickname “gg”
4. Set the URL to:

    https://www.google.com/search?q=%20&udm=14

5. Set it as your default search engine.

For Vivaldi Mobile:

The mobile version doesn’t seem to have an option to customize its search engine, but you can add a shortcut to your Vivaldi homepage.

1. Go to the home page (the little house icon at the bottom center).
2. Click the plus button to add a new shortcut.
3. Complete the fields as follows:
   • Name: Good Google
   • Search string URL: https://www.google.com/search?q=%20&udm=14
   • Description: Good Google
   • Nickname: gg
4. Click “Save”.

For Opera on PC and Mac:

If you’re using one of the Opera browsers, the solution is similar to Vivaldi mobile above: launch a shortcut that takes you directly to text links instead of the “generative search experience”. For that, proceed as following :

1. Go to the home page (the little house icon at the bottom center) which should take you to Opera’s “speed dial” screen.
2. Click the plus button to add a new shortcut.
3. Complete the field as follows:
   • Search string URL: https://www.google.com/search?q=%20&udm=14
4. Click “Save”.

Once saved, you can modify the shortcut to have a better name:

1. Go to your “speed dial” tab and find the button corresponding to your newly created shortcut.
2. Click on the three dots that appear at the top right.
3. Change the name to “Good Google”.

Other sea fish: some alternatives might surprise you

Instead of just removing Google from Google, consider switching to completely different search engines.

If you’re open to AI, but not Google’s AI, Perplexity AI is a promising alternative that AI enthusiasts praise. Founded in 2022, Perplexity AI is a chatbot-powered search engine that provides clear and concise answers with inline quotes. It offers a free basic search engine and a paid version, Perplexity Pro, which includes features like GPT-4 integration and unlimited file downloads.

With Perplexity, you interact with the search engine in a conversational way, receiving natural language answers and having the option to ask follow-up questions to get more detailed answers or to simplify the results. There is no need to switch to keyword mode.

Alternatively, you can use AI assistants like GPT-4 (via ChatGPT Plus, Microsoft’s Bing, or Microsoft’s Copilot) to search the web and summarize the results. Remember to explicitly tell ChatGPT to “search the web” if you want the most recent information, as it may sometimes respond based on its fixed knowledge database instead of searching for the most recent information .

If you use Microsoft’s Edge browser or are a Windows user, you can access Copilot by clicking the icon at the bottom left of your Windows taskbar or at the top right of your Edge browser. For reference, look at the red squares in the image below, highlighting the icon:

And let’s not forget old-school search engine underdogs like DuckDuckGo, and model-changing paid search tools like Kagi. These alternative search engines may also provide results that may be hidden by Google’s algorithm. However, keep in mind that SEO has affected the entire Internet and there is no guarantee that these alternatives will be completely free of spam and AI interference.

Boy, do we miss AltaVista.

Edited by Ryan Ozawa.