Latest news with #ErnieSmith
NZ Herald
22-07-2025
- NZ Herald
Try these hidden ‘nope' buttons to stop AI content
When Google started to spit out AI-generated summaries at the top of many search results last year, the company also gave you a (well-hidden) option to see only plain vanilla website links and text instead. This 'Web' filter is a flashback to how Google search worked many years ago – if you can ever find it. Ernie Smith, editor of the Tedium newsletter about technology and obscurities, figured out a cheat code that shows you the no-AI Google search results without fumbling around in Google's tabs or settings with every search. You might still get text advertisements under 'sponsored'. Mostly, though, you'll see Google's suggested web links without AI summaries or other doodads crammed into search results like product images that are ads in disguise. You can hop back to the AI-and-other search results by hitting the 'All' option that's just under the search terms. You have at least two relatively simple ways to get AI-free Google search results: 1) Type your search into the website that Smith created, named after the cheat code. This takes you straight to Google's website-only search results that are tricky to find otherwise. Bookmark the website and use it for some or all of your Google searches. This does send information on what you're searching to Smith, who says it's not being collected or saved. 2) With certain web browsers, you can change your settings to make the no-AI search results the standard every time. Smith has instructions or check out the One Tiny Win section below. Smith cautioned that these tricks may work inconsistently or stop working at some point. Other tips you can find online to exclude AI summaries from your Google searches, include adding '-AI' or sprinkling curse words into your search terms. Smith said those tricks aren't really effective. Smith uses Google a lot for work and found the AI 'overviews', as Google calls its AI-generated summaries of relevant websites, unwelcome and unhelpful. 'In a lot of ways this is a very basic hack,' Smith said, 'to solve a problem that Google created for its users.' A Google spokesman said in the company's testing, people find their search results more useful with features like the AI overviews. The company also says a small fraction of people shift from the standard search results with AI summaries to the web-only option. You might find it handy to have AI-generated summaries in your Google search results. I sometimes do. Smith's hack puts the choice in your hands rather than Google's. Stop AI in DuckDuckGo image and web searches Last week, the privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo gave you a new power to filter out AI-generated material from image searches. This is a big deal because people have complained about searches in Google Images, Pinterest and other visual sites churning up slop and AI knockoffs. (Pinterest said it's experimenting with options to see fewer AI-modified images.) In DuckDuckGo's settings you can make it standard to hide AI images in searches, or pick that option in each image search. DuckDuckGo says this feature uses available online lists of AI material that won't catch all AI-generated images. Unlike Google, DuckDuckGo also lets you easily and permanently turn off AI-generated summaries in your search results. (From DuckDuckGo's settings, choose 'never' for what it calls AI Assist. You can also hide DuckDuckGo's chatbot.) Gisele Navarro, managing editor of product-review website HouseFresh and an astute observer of web trends, said it's refreshing that DuckDuckGo gives users the freedom to stop AI material. 'As a user, I feel listened to and allowed to make my choice,' Navarro said. 'As a web publisher, I feel my human content is being appreciated and given the chance to be found. One tiny win These instructions are for Chrome, the most popular web browser and the standard for Android phones. With these changes to your settings, Google or DuckDuckGo web search results should automatically exclude AI material. The DuckDuckGo one is essentially the nope-to-AI nuclear option, hiding all AI search features from your face entirely. None of these options work if you're using the Safari browser for Mac or iPhones. For Google search: In Chrome's web browser for a computer, click the three dots in the top right corner. • Settings > Search engine > Manage search engines and site search > scroll down to 'Site search' and choose 'Add'. • You can make the 'name' and 'shortcut' fields anything you like. Example: Name: AINOPE Shortcut: Gminus URL: Then click 'Add'. • You should see that option show up now under Site search. Click the three dots on the right and choose 'Make default'. - - - For DuckDuckGo search: In Chrome's web browser for a computer, click the three dots in the top right corner. • Settings > Search engine > Manage search engines and site search > scroll down to 'Site search' and choose 'Add'. • You can make the 'name' and 'shortcut' fields anything you like. Example: Name: AINOPE Shortcut: Dminus URL: Then click 'Add' • You should see that option show up now under Site search. Click the three dots on the right and choose 'Make default'.
Yahoo
20-02-2025
- Yahoo
Don't Want AI Overviews? How to Get 10 Plain Google Search Results
Despite a rough start back in May 2024, the AI Overviews on Google search results have become standard for many queries. Almost 50% of all Google searches are now returning AI Overviews in results, according to a December 2024 study by Search Engine Journal. While Google's AI Overviews might be beneficial if you're looking for a simple answer, they can be frustrating for users who are searching for links, not answers to questions. Luckily, there's a Google "Web" search filter that makes it possible to get only websites in your search results. Even better, you can get those link-based results on Google just by searching from your browser address bar. We'll show you how to do it on Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari or Microsoft Edge. Google's new Web filter is similar to its filters for results like News, Images, Videos or Shopping. When the Web filter is selected, your search results will return only text-based links, with no AI summaries, videos or knowledge panels like "Top Stories" or "People Always Ask." The new filter should appear below the search box on the Google Search results page, among other filters like News, Images and Videos. You'll usually have to click the three-dot "More" menu to see it as an option. Clicking the Web filter link will give you Google Search results composed entirely of text-based links, with no answers, AI or anything else. "Web" will now be underlined and highlighted in blue under the search query box. In our initial tests of Google's Web filter, we did not see any sponsored search results or other advertisements, but that filter will still return ad results for certain search queries, according to a Google spokesperson. After testing out more search terms with the Google Web filter, we were also able to see search ads for a few specific queries. Depending on your browser, it's fairly easy to customize your browser settings so that your address bar searches go straight to the Google Web filter results. You'll need to create a custom site search shortcut in your browser and then trigger that search option with a keyword or make it your default for all searches. The critical URL that you need to remember is The "%s" represents your search query, and the "udm=14" tag limits your results to the new Web filter. Here's how to add the necessary custom site search for Google's Web filter in the four most popular web desktop browsers -- Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox and Apple Safari. If you don't want to bother with browser settings, you can always just use the website &udm=14, built by Ernie Smith of Tedium. It provides a front-end to Google Search with the necessary Web filter parameter automatically included. Open up a Google Chrome browser window, then click on the three-dot menu in the upper-right corner, next to your Google account profile. Click Settings near the bottom of that menu. You can also get to your Chrome settings by entering chrome://settings in the browser address bar. Select Search engine from the left-hand column, then click "Manage search engines and site search" in the middle of the browser window. Next, scroll down to "Site search" and click the blue Add button. In the resultant pop-up window, create a name for the new search shortcut and a keyword for triggering it. We chose "Old Google" and "og." For the last field -- "URL with %s in place of query" -- enter that URL we mentioned above: Then click the blue Add button. Now when you search your address bar using "og" + your search term, you'll get results using Google's Web filter. If you'd like to make it your default search option, click the three-dot menu next to your new site search and select "Make default." After you make the new search shortcut your default search, all of your address-bar searches will use the Web filter -- no keyword needed. The Windows browser is based on the Chromium codebase, so the steps for adding a Google Search Web filter shortcut are similar to Google Chrome. Navigate into Settings by clicking the three-dot menu in the upper-right corner, then select Privacy, search, and services. Near the bottom of the following screen, select Address bar and search, then Manage search engines. Alternatively, you can navigate directly to that screen by entering edge://settings/searchEngines in your Edge address bar. Click the Add button to create your new site search shortcut. The Search engine is your name for the shortcut (I used "Old Google"), the Shortcut is the term that triggers that specific site search (I used "og"), and the URL template is the string that triggers the Google Search Web filter: To make that new Google URL your default search, go back to the Address bar and search settings page and click on the drop-down menu next to Search engine used in the address bar. Select your new custom site search, and your address bar searches will default to the Google Search Web filter. Firefox works a little bit differently for setting up search shortcuts. Instead of using the search settings, you'll create a new bookmark with a keyword shortcut, then use that keyword in the address bar to trigger the Web filter results for Google Search. Unfortunately, Firefox doesn't let you add new search engines in its desktop version. From the Bookmarks drop-down in Firefox, select Manage Bookmarks. On the following screen, right-click on the folder in your Bookmarks where you'd like to place the shortcut, then select "Add Bookmark." (Since you'll be triggering it from the address bar, it doesn't matter where the bookmark lives.) In the following pop-up window, enter a Name (for example, "Old Google"), the URL and a Keyword (such as "og") to save the search filter as a bookmark. Hit the "Save" button, and the Google Web filter results will be available by entering your keyword before any address-bar searches. Safari doesn't enable custom site shortcuts by default. The only way we were able to add the Google Web filter search was by installing the free Safari extension Smart Keyword Search, which enables site search shortcuts. After installing Smart Keyword Search, the first thing you'll need to do is enable it to adjust your Google search results. Go into Settings, click Extensions at the top of the window, select Smart Keyword Search, then click on the "Edit Websites" button. On the following page, click the drop-down menu next to and select "Allow." Now close the Settings window, and click the icon for Smart Keyword Search that appears next to the Safari address bar. You'll see a pop-up window with the various "rules" the extension uses to modify searches. Click the "compose" button to start a new rule, then enter a name (such as. "Old Google"), prefix (for example, "og") and a familiar URL for the Web filter search shortcut. Smart Keyword Search uses the variable "{search}" instead of "%s" to indicate a search query, so you'll need to enter a slightly different URL: Hit the "submit" button. Now entering "og" (or your selected prefix) before any searches in your address bar will return results restricted by Google's Web filter. You can further customize your searches on Google so that the search engine only returns results based on the exact terms that you use -- not synonyms or related terms. The "verbatim" option was introduced back in 2011 and is usually accessed via the "Tools" link under most Google searches. To add a "verbatim" restriction to your Web filter shortcut, append the attribute "&tbs=li:1" to the end of your custom search URL: Any searches that you make using that new URL will now only return text-based web links for your exact search queries. For more, discover how to use Google's circle-to-search feature on the iPhone and five Google Assistant settings you need to change right now. Correction, July 2: An earlier version of this story misstated the absence of advertisements on Google Web filter results. After further testing, we were able to confirm that search ads can appear on Google Search Web filter results.
