Already getting sick of seeing ‘AI’ results at the top of a search when all you want is a link to a site?
I just discovered this article showing a way to not see it (although it doesn’t disable it altogether).
TLDR:
- In Chrome open settings menu, choose Search engine on left menu and scroll down to site search
- Click Add button and choose a name (eg Old Google, Google Web or whatever)
- Add a shortcut word (eg web, og, or whatever)
- Add this URL string: https://www.google.com/search?q=%s&udm=14
- Save that, and now if you search for something and use the shortcut word you set you’ll just get proper results, no ‘AI’ shown
- Or, if you don’t want to have to add a shortcut word, you just make that search your default (use the 3 dot menu next to the name you set) and all searches will show that way, no shortcut word needed.
EDIT - meant to add that there are detailed instructions for Edge, Firefox and Safari in the article if you don’t use Chrome
Hope that helps someone - I really don’t like all that extra nonsense when I just want a link to a site that I know exists!
[Obligatory - “or don’t use Chrome/Google…”, I know - but people do, so this might be useful]
As you said there are people who don’t want to switch from Chrome and Google, but at this point if you’re talking about a ten step fix-it plan, is really does make more sense to just use Firefox and DDG. Or searx, I’m pretty sure that’s still fewer steps.
Yeah. I went to duck duck go a while ago.
Their default maps is terrible, but web search works fine.
For some reason the only videos they link on the video tab is YouTube tho, which sucks and you’re better off just searching YouTube instead at that point.
“Hey wanna use our AI chat?!”
“Hey, like these autogenerated result-blobs instead of your actual results?”
“Hey, we thought you hate finding the place you were looking for, so we use Apple Maps to ensure you’re getting fucking nowhere, ever!”
I wish DDG was usable. All it is, is a good showcase that Google isn’t as bad as they could be.
Pfttt… at least with DDG you can turn any of that stuff off with a button in a UI rather than having to make a new bookmark or fuck around with your browsers search engine.
You can even turn the ads off if you want.
Also, Apple Maps is totally fine, it’s not overloaded with ads like Google Maps is and it basically always finds the place I search for.
Okay this is the one thing I’d readily disagree on.
Beyond its absolutely inability to find non-US results (there’s a steak house next to me, I can enter that exact name including capitalization + the name of the city I live in, and it’ll instead find a different-named steak house in a US city names like my non-US one instead), not being able to click places on the map to select them is just laughable.
Nevermind how it’s navigation is ridiculous, at least over here. It just travels shortest path, no respect for traffic lights or anything.
It’s a very good showcase of how superior Google Maps actually is, as a maps application. And how much openstreetmap has left everything else in the dust, too.
Agreed, and additionally in Australka at least it’s also slow as absolute fuck. Click on the map preview? Takes at least 30s to load the base map.
I guess YMMV, I just tried a few places around me (UK) and it found them all. You can also defiantly tap on a place to select it.
Did you try it recently or a while ago? I know it was pretty woeful when it came out but it’s improved a whole lot over the years.
DDG AI chat is actually pretty decent, offers multiple options for free with no noticable limit; maps is dogshit agreed, still have to fall back to google, use uBlock and can remove the featured results on DDG.
Yeah I was more comparing how they push things on you, too. They’re of course much nicer, in particular because you can just turn things off, which is how it ought to work. I don’t mind things being default-on, most users would otherwise never realize stuff even exists. But it really needs to be able to be disabled, like how DDG allows it. (But sadly not for their godawful Apple Maps)
Yeah you’re not wrong, I used DDG without uBlock the other day and it’s basically become Google that “doesn’t track you”. Which I think is the main thing going for them. I wish they’d use OSM or something that’s actually not slow as fuck.
I’ve never noticed anything of what you describe. Perhaps they get filtered by uBlock. And isn’t the default Bing Maps for DDG?
Sadly not. I wish. Or maybe it’s per-country? Here in Germany it’s all Apple. Apple Maps, Apple Weather, etc. And they’re all equally terrible and seem to be extremely US-centric in their results.
Kagi is better than all of them besides your own SearXNG setup. I’ve always thought DDG was bad, but man Kagi is like going back to the good ole days of Google in the 2000s.
I wish Kagi wasn’t as expensive as it is.
If it was $5 a month for unlimited searches I would be all over it but 300 searches is too few and $10 is too much money.
I think the price won’t come down until they get more subscribers. I agree that 300 isn’t enough for any sort of software dev, but it’s fine if you’re careful about your searches. I went the first trial month keeping it under 300. When I started paying for 1000 then it was easy to keep it under that. Then they switched it to unlimited which is nice, but I still hardly ever go over 1k. If there was a 1k option I would definitely go with that since you only pay fractions of a cent per search after that so I would save money.
I take the point - but it doesn’t make sense if you still prefer Chrome/Google to those overall and just want to change one aspect of it. This is just a way to improve the experience for people who are mostly happy with what they use and not interested in changing from it. It’s great that we as users have that choice, that’s how it should be.
but youre asking for something thats effectively cosmetic filtering, a feature that google pushing Manifeat V3, for example removed ublock for having as a user feature. while its good to have a choice, you need to understand when you’re effectively fighting against yourself by asking for a feature that was intentionally removed, and you could get back, had you werent deadset with siding with the company that killed the feature.
I’m not asking for anything. This isn’t a support request. I found something I find useful and wanted to share it. That’s all.