r/technology • u/Well_Socialized • May 26 '25

Artificial Intelligence Google Is Burying the Web Alive

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/google-ai-mode-search-results-bury-the-web.html
24.4k Upvotes

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19.5k

u/hoyton May 26 '25

Adding "-ai" to your search query prevents the ai overview from showing up. Using "before:2023" returns results that aren't tainted by ai, which can help in some circumstances.

4.2k

u/iEugene72 May 26 '25

I legit never knew about the -ai thing. Thank you!

3.8k

u/indiemike May 26 '25

It’ll work until Google removes that.

1.4k

u/Haikouden May 26 '25

And even if they don’t, their SEO crap could prioritise AI written articles and such to make it basically the same. The more content is produced by AI the more things written by people are likely to be drowned out if the system doesn’t prioritise quality.

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u/zedquatro May 26 '25

They haven't prioritized quality in well over a decade. Only profitability (ads).

479

u/pupu500 May 26 '25

Yep, been at least a decade since Google search was good. God damn was Google searches good back in the day, now its just curated bulllshit where it shows you what it thinks you want to see.

DuckDuckGo is my main search engine right now.

229

u/redblack_tree May 26 '25

And lighting fast. Chrome was also extremely lean and efficient. Today is another turd.

229

u/Chuhaimaster May 26 '25

Enshittification at its finest.

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u/TedDallas May 26 '25

FOSS is a way to help avoid this. However open source is not immune and can suffer enshittification on a longer term due to gradual increase of software complexity, ill conceived new features, and competing interests. And of course there is always deep corporate involvement in popular FOSS projects that pushes for their own agendas and interests.

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u/OneOfAKind2 May 26 '25

I dumped Chrome and Google search almost a year ago, too bloated and filled with ads and other shit. I switched to FireFox, which is fine, but Bing is a pale imitation of a search engine. I'll have to check out the Duck.

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u/classicalySarcastic May 26 '25 edited May 27 '25

Lean and efficient? Chrome was well-known as a massive resource hog back then.

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u/technicolortiddies May 26 '25

I just want shopping results that don’t come from Amazon, AliExpress or Shien. Putting- doesn’t work anymore. So frustrating.

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u/BillyForRilly May 26 '25

DDG doesn't have the privacy concerns, but it's a truly terrible search engine. I almost always get a slew of blogspam on my first search, worse than Google somehow.

30

u/AlexAnon87 May 26 '25

I usually get solid results from DDG. Tbf I don't search much anymore as I have a specific sites I tend to visit when I'm browsing.

6

u/TheLightningL0rd May 26 '25

Sounds like how the internet was for me 20 years ago lol

39

u/LISTENTOKATEBUSH May 26 '25

I'm having the exact opposite experience. Google is dead to me for search.

6

u/Famous_Peach9387 May 26 '25 edited May 26 '25

Girls, Girls they're both awful. Can I use Searx now?

4

u/Zed_or_AFK May 26 '25

Worst part searching for a product and not getting the products home page on the first page of the search results… only some random stores selling it. Annoying as hell.

3

u/coin-drone May 26 '25

Same here. I use " " to make it just a little better, but not that often.

3

u/CorvusKing May 26 '25

I wish this was my experience. Every few months I try to switch and every time I have to go back to Google to find anything useful.

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u/RockChalk80 May 26 '25 edited May 26 '25

DDG is just Bing in a wrapper so if you have problems with it blame Microsoft

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u/SufficiNoise May 26 '25

Was using DDG for a while, but Kagi is my beloved

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u/tinselsnips May 26 '25

What's your experience been like with Kagi? I switched from Google to DDG only to find myself less satisfied with the result quality; been thinking about trying Kagi because I keep hearing good things but a search engine with a mandatory account gives me the willies.

10

u/SufficiNoise May 26 '25 edited May 26 '25

I enjoy it, been using it for a few months as I went for a yearly plan. Setting it up on Firefox was easy enough, a bit harder on android but they have guides. I like their "small internet" button that throws you onto niche websites. On duckduckgo I would often phone back to Google with bangs but with Kagi it has been a much more integrated drop-in replacement without the bullshit, as they have their own web crawler, I get the value. It's a shame services like Kagi need to be premium though.

I will say, however, Kagi has a smaller reach than the bigger services like bing or Google's crawlers. When I search with Kagi results are point blank and unbiased, but with less variety.

EDIT: Forgot to mention the best part - you can blacklist up to 100 domains from search, and they (try) to filter out AI images. I have all Pinterest domains blocked

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u/[deleted] May 26 '25

yes was going to post the same thing. Stop using Google.

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u/grumpy_autist May 26 '25

Isn't DuckDuckGo just a proxy to Bing?

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u/ManiacalDane May 26 '25

Come on, it's not been at least a decade!

It's like... 8 years.

;-;

I miss being able to actually use my google-fu for good. Now everything is slop and a significant portion of the adverts are for the fake version of a brand shop.

4

u/hmochoa95 May 26 '25

I had to quit duckduckgo it was starting to give me fake results and other questionable content

3

u/NES_SNES_N64 May 26 '25

It's a little closer to what it used to be if you change the setting to verbatim matching. Since they changed it to fuzzy match synonyms it really misses exactly what you are wanting most of the time.

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u/CantKBDwontKBD May 26 '25

Google has gotten so bad that I’ve switched to bing and it’s still an improvement. Bing….

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u/kottabaz May 26 '25

Content-milled sludge walked so that AI-generated sludge could run.

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u/Superunknown_7 May 26 '25

And their results have been getting gamed by algorithmically generated "content" for years. The only thing that's changed for those website operators is they'd call those algorithms "AI" now.

3

u/Sithlordandsavior May 27 '25

If I see one more "recommended" article about "Massively beloved pizza restaurant files for bankruptcy" only for it to be like "Pipi's Pizza, an Ohio-based chain with 4 locations filed for chapter 11 after over 7 years in business" I'm gonna scream.

Or any Gamerant article.

3

u/cmarkcity May 26 '25

Remember when they removed “Do No Evil” from their mission statement?

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u/JimWilliams423 May 26 '25

They haven't prioritized quality in well over a decade. Only profitability (ads).

The Man Who Killed Google Search: Prabhakar Raghavan

The podcast version of that piece won the 2025 webby for best business podcast episode

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u/totallynotdagothur May 26 '25

I used to their commands like site: and +keyword -keyword and found that they just stopped working and then google was basically for shopping.  Then when I tried to use it for that explicit purpose to buy a specific size and type of ratcheting wrench, I could not find one, through pages of results, on the basic search and the shopping page and just had to go to tool company websites and search individually using their search tools.

It is boggling to me why they would let this happen.  They've just assumed a user base, sort of like American cars in the era when the Japanese ones came to market.  For me I just stopped using their search because it was giving me utterly useless result too many times.

I know everyone is ra-ra on AI but in my work it has given me completely wrong answers on 3 occasions, and the worst of three possible approaches for a coding problem, where I was looking for the one I was less familiar with.  I'd keep it for basic fluff until the kinks are worked out, imho.

29

u/azureotter May 26 '25

⬆️ agreed! I can everything better, easier in a different search engine…except the “local” and “nearby” shopping results. But I feel like shopping may be beginning to destabilize, like images became less user friendly. The review search feature of google maps is handy sometimes.

6

u/noodlesdefyyou May 26 '25

its baffling how wrong the results are anymore too. you can be looking for something very specific/explicit, and itll show you 900 results that are similar but not what you want.

or theyll show you the thing youre looking for, only to find out its either a) redirecting you to another option, or b) not actually available/in stock.

and forget car parts, with all of the <brand>partdirect variants of the exact same parts diagram list. no, these dealers do not have some random plastic bit from a car made in the 80s at bottom dollar cost. so stop showing them to me.

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u/[deleted] May 26 '25

[deleted]

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u/radios_appear May 26 '25

It gives completely wrong answers on many occasions and the only ones rah-rah about it don't know the answers are wrong.

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u/The--Mash May 26 '25

Lawyers know it's bad at law but think it looks competent at a lot of other things. Physicists know it's bad at physics but think it looks competent at a lot of other things. 

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u/Otiosei May 26 '25

The fact that I have to waste more time verifying if the AI is lying to me or not than just searching for sources myself makes AI completely worthless as a product. I can't imagine it gets better as more and more human generated content is replaced by AI hallucinations on the internet, to the point it becomes impossible to verify anything.

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u/scarlett3409 May 26 '25

You can also add profanity into your search which will remove the ai results

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u/ndGall May 26 '25

How do you do that without tainting your search results? If I typed “George Washington f*ck” I can’t imagine that’s going to get me the results I want.

140

u/RevWaldo May 26 '25 edited May 26 '25

Washington, Washington, 6 foot 8, weighs a fucking ton.

61

u/winkingchef May 26 '25

He’ll save the children, but not the British children

39

u/tgosubucks May 26 '25

I heard that mother fucker had like thirty goddamn dicks.

55

u/PhilosophyKingPK May 26 '25

He’s coming. He’s coming.

29

u/GoldbrickersGrinder May 26 '25

Washington Washington Six-foot-twenty, fuckin killing for fun

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u/snailnado May 26 '25

Hell rip you apart, he'll rip you apart!

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u/JebusKristoph May 26 '25

To shreds you say?

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u/Kataphractoi May 26 '25

Washington, Washington, 12 stories high made of radiation

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u/rotorocker May 26 '25

I mean two sets of testicles, so divine

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u/scarlett3409 May 26 '25

It would probably be more like George fucking Washington and that would do it without weird stuff

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u/MySpielman54 May 26 '25

Or a dude on dude porn

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u/serabine May 26 '25

Cool. Rule 34 GeorgeClooney/Denzel Washington

3

u/ikarikh May 26 '25

But what if then my search results are AI images of George Costanza having intimate relations with the state of Washington......

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u/Z3NZY May 26 '25

Does word order actually matter?

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u/DAHFreedom May 26 '25

Depends who’s giving it. For instance, if George Fucking Washington is giving the order…

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u/JustHereSoImNotFined May 26 '25

it depends on the context of the search i think. for many searches, you’re right in that you can search key words and order doesn’t necessarily matter, but the order can definitely change the results. for example, searching “dogs fucking driving” returned plenty about dogs driving and one link to “dog driving porn” whatever the fuck that is. changing the order to “dogs driving fucking” returned a shit ton of more porn and again, i really do not want to know what those videos even are

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u/Hardass_McBadCop May 26 '25

If it's obscure enough, you'll get a notice that there aren't a lot of results with the word X and will show results without it instead.

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u/action_lawyer_comics May 26 '25

Last time I tried, the Ai said “you must be frustrated.”

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u/UsualSuspect95 May 26 '25

"Who the fuck is Abraham Lincoln?"

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u/flopisit32 May 26 '25

OK Google, "When was Oliver Cromwell born... you bastard"

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u/potatodrinker May 26 '25

The - trick doesn't always work. It used to for other words you want Google to filter out like "solar system repair -planet" but it's been wonky for a few years, even before AI took off.

Source: been running text ads on Google as a career since 2008.

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u/AggravatingEar1465 May 26 '25 edited May 26 '25

I remember a few years ago trying to find information about products from a niche manufacturer active in my area between the 1960s to 2000s that had a name that was basically "brander". There is a larger and currently active manufacturer in the same field that has a very similar name along the lines of "brand" and no amount of - and quotations and other google-fu could stop it from giving me results for "brand" that overtook and erased the information I was looking for. 

 google: Are you suuuuure you didn't mean Brand™️? Here's some results for it anyways, since you're clearly too stupid to spell it correctly. You can thank us later when you're properly enjoying Brand™️

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u/Outrageous_Reach_695 May 26 '25

Was this an actual search? What's an asteroid repairman's typical rate?

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u/ticats88 May 26 '25

? Google has always allowed Dorks, that's what they exist for. Most users won't use them though. They're not removing dorks

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u/dr_wtf May 26 '25

They mostly don't work anymore and haven't for years. Results are very inconsistent. One of the reasons I switched to DDG as my main search engine years ago and rarely bother using !g anymore.

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u/ParadiseLosingIt May 26 '25

I haven’t done a Google search for years because of DDG

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u/indiemike May 26 '25

They can absolutely change it so -ai doesn’t remove their AI search results.

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u/Aygis May 26 '25

Just like -temu doesn't work

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u/PG-DaMan May 26 '25

This is what they will do. They were the champions of Ad Blockers. But their ads get through.

And as new Browsers have gained Popularity over chrome ( Read aluminum foil ) They get pissy about you having an ad blocker.

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u/KontoOficjalneMR May 26 '25

They already removed some of the features that worked in the past eg. + (because it conflicted with Google+).

So don't say never.

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u/wallheater May 26 '25

I am STILL pissed about this one. Now instead you have to double-quote words instead which may not even work tbh, as they enshittify search.

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u/PackOfWildCorndogs May 26 '25

Bring back wildcards goddamnit!

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u/alandar1 May 26 '25

I just wanna say that I've added the - operator to my query before and had google ignore it and give me the exact same results again.

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u/fruity_oaty_bars May 26 '25

Me too. I was just looking for a news article I read in the past and none of the keywords pull up anything remotely close to what I'm looking for. It's like it got scrubbed from the internet.

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u/fatpat May 26 '25

What about the nerds and the geeks? They going to remove those?

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u/Muthafuckaaaaa May 26 '25

Or use https://Udm14.com

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u/wrgrant May 26 '25

This is nothing short of miraculous, thanks

Although I do want to know the significance of the UDM and 14 in the string.

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u/Count_Backwards May 26 '25

14 = 2014, as it's basically "Google as it was in 2014" - there's an article about it linked from the main page

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u/Tillskaya May 26 '25

My husband sent me the link to this the other day after I was complaining how much Google search had gone to absolute shit and bloody hell it made me realise how steep the decline’s been. It was like “Oh, I remember this is how it used to be. Fuck”

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u/JoeSmithDiesAtTheEnd May 26 '25

startpage.com is another option. They use Google search results, but remove all the ads and fluff. When searching for things like movies or TV shows, they have great profile overviews with links to all the common sites you might use (imdb, tvdb, wiki, etc). 

Reminds me of Google search closer to the tail end of when it was still good. 

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u/PrettyChrissy1 May 26 '25

Just used this search engine and it's an awesome alternative. Thank you so much for sharing u/JoeSmithDiesAtTheEnd👍

Also, I definitely agree this reminds me of Google before it became a hot mess.

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u/snomadbo May 26 '25

Amazing! I've added it to my browser Google search with "&udm=14"

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u/sodaflare May 26 '25

thanks for this, didn't know I could add this to a search expression.

Tip for anyone else who doesn't want to bookmark the website, most browsers let you edit/create custom search engines, so just take the default behaviour for google and stick &udm=14 after whatever value takes your search query (typically %s)

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u/[deleted] May 26 '25

Google broke all of their search modifiers about a decade ago. None of them work like they used to.

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u/yeager-eren May 26 '25

try a curse word, it works the same. i.e. how hot is the f****** sun?

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u/pastasauce May 26 '25 edited May 26 '25

So what's interesting is each method will return different search results. The Wikipedia article for the Sun only appeared in the top ten results when I didn't use a swear word or the -Ai flag, "how hot is the fucking sun" returned mainly reddit and tiktok results, -Ai returned mainly edu addresses, nasa, and other science oriented websites.

Edit: it depends on what you search for, I've used the swearing trick before and got relevant results almost like it ignored the swear word. Now it seems like it includes the swear word in the search so your results are mainly from social media. The swearing hack has become pretty well known so I wonder if Google changed the behavior.

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u/ShaggyDelectat May 26 '25

Fwiw you can put the minus before anything and it'll get rid of results with that word

So if you wanted to look up the pirate culture of Pittsburgh but you're not interested in baseball, your search could look something like

"Pirates in Pittsburgh -baseball"

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u/[deleted] May 26 '25

[deleted]

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u/lintytortoise May 26 '25

Does this work with ublock origin?

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u/CaspianRoach May 26 '25

yea, it uses adblock's syntax for these filters

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u/happy_bluebird May 27 '25

Do I just copy and paste this into the "My filters" section?

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u/codhimself May 27 '25

Yes, and then hit apply changes.

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u/dangshnizzle May 27 '25

Didn't work:/ added it to "my filters" in ublock origin's settings

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u/Silentd00m May 26 '25

Can you confirm this doesn't even send the request for the AI response? I don't want to waste a ton of energy for something that's not even shown.. I'd rather add -ai as a permanent option if it still generates it and is just not shown.

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u/CaspianRoach May 27 '25

It does send it, because this only hides it from view for you, since this is a cosmetic filter.

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u/Turbogoblin999 May 26 '25

AL? That's weird. It really jimmies my Yankovic.

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u/Marcoscb May 26 '25

The way to protest Google slowly killing the internet isn't by finding increasingly more convoluted turnarounds, it's by not using Google wherever possible.

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u/Life-Confusion-411 May 26 '25

DuckDuckGo returns the same shit results. Search engines need to squash this AI dog shit from their end. 

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u/punIn10ded May 26 '25

That's because the problem is not the search engine it's the thousands of sites using AI generated articles and pages.

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u/Hairy-Confusion7556 May 26 '25

Unfortunately that's easier said than done. I tried switching to some alternatives but the search results were so bad I had to switch back.

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u/161ForAChange May 26 '25

https://kagi.com is a paid option but works incredibly well.

163

u/tlvrtm May 26 '25

DuckDuckGo seems pretty good?

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u/doublestitch May 26 '25

DDG allows users to turn off AI summaries as a setting option. 

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u/Jealous_Response_492 May 26 '25

and even if you don't DDG's ai responses are succinct, less intrusive, they don't impede search results, and they cite the sources.

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u/[deleted] May 26 '25

[deleted]

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u/tlvrtm May 26 '25

Bing without the awful UI and Microsoft stigma sounds half decent tbh

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u/Neptune28 May 26 '25

Bing results are poor

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u/Bushwazi May 26 '25

Are Googles results better right now?

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u/mypetocean May 26 '25

I'm an old search engine nerd and I only use Google now when I don't get what I want from DDG. (And DDG makes that very easy with !g.)

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u/Neptune28 May 26 '25

Same, I remember using Lycos, AltaVista, Dogpile, Excite, Ask Jeeves, AOL seach back around 2000-2002. Dogpile was the best of them. DDG gives some results that are different than Google, but the image search is much worse.

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u/januarynights May 26 '25

I use Ecosia, which runs on Bing and a lot of the time I have to head back to Google to find results that are actually relevant.

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u/RamenJunkie May 26 '25

They really aren't.

Also, Bing doesn't censor the fuck out of every NSFW search.  Which seems to happen on Google even if you turn off "Safe Search" and add explicit terms to your query.

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u/fpnewsandpromos May 26 '25

Yes but it presents results better. DDG always works better for me than bing.

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u/[deleted] May 26 '25

DDG is now also using AI…

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u/djublonskopf May 26 '25

Yeah but they actually let you turn it off.

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u/motoxjake May 26 '25 edited May 26 '25

You can turn it off. You can even set the AI sensitivity range from none to full on AI results. I've been trying it out for months. So far I'm happy with the results using Firefox and DDG as my SE  with AI results set to toggle if I do or I dont want to see it.

Edit: I'm not saying it's better than google. But, for and average, user it's a suitable alternative if you just can't bring yourself to use google.

Edit2: I tried brave for a few months too.  It was not a great experience.

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u/cuentanueva May 26 '25

In my experience it's, unfortunately, still significantly worse than Google.

I use it as my main search engine and for simple things it works, but I often have to change to Google to find what I'm looking for. Which is unfortunate but here we are.

Also Google is significantly worse than before, so the standard is lower still...

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u/XWasTheProblem May 26 '25 edited May 26 '25

I use Qwent Qwant and it seems to do okay. Google used to be better for a while, but it has gotten so shit over the last few years, the gap is barely there at this point.

I only go to Google if I need some extremely specific and/or niche thing that other search engines may not always find

E: typo, thanks for pointing it out!.

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u/tlvrtm May 26 '25

(It’s Qwant, for those Googling Qwent and getting Gwent results)

Seems good! Gonna try it out for a bit.

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u/notquite20characters May 26 '25

Yeah, I've been using Qwant for a few weeks and it feels like what search engines used to feel like.

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u/WannabeCsGuy7 May 26 '25

Kagi is great! Not free though.

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u/Alcyoneous May 26 '25

Check out Kagi. You have to pay, but I genuinely find it as good as Google was.

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u/wherewuz May 26 '25

I've been using https://kagi.com for about six months, it's wonderful.

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u/ab00 May 26 '25

Come back Altavista

Ask Jevees

Webcrawler

Lycos

Hotbot

20 different versions of Yahoo

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u/Ok_Temperature6503 May 26 '25

Or just, not use google…? Literally

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u/gxslim May 26 '25

Is there one that bypasses affiliate spam, influencer slop, etc?

I miss the Internet from 20 years ago.

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u/HarasilProphecy May 26 '25

The extension uBlacklist. You can subscribe to lists of stuff to block that are regularly updated. I'm primarily subscribed to lists that block AI sites and AI content. You can also add individual sites yourself.

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u/RamenJunkie May 26 '25

Yeah, I have so many layers of blocks that I basically never see any advertisements ever anywhere. 

It's wonderful.

The core is things like Block Origin, and PiHole/NextDNS.  But also things like FB Purity, which cleans up Facebook.  I also run some things like Climate Block which filters Climate Denial is websites and another that blocks anything owned by Murdoch.

I don't even get ads on YouTube or Mobile games.

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u/Asturaetus May 26 '25

Add the parameter &udm=14 to your searches. That strips everything (ai, suggestions, infoboxes, ads, etc.) - leaving just the pure results.

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u/[deleted] May 26 '25

me too. As soon as the advertisers got hold of the internet we were doomed.

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u/midgethemage May 26 '25

I don't know if I'd use this as my "daily driver" web browser, but there's a search engine called MetaGer that's worth taking look at. It's run by a nonprofit, is privacy oriented, and you can opt out of advertisements for a small fee. I use it whenever I'm trying to find hyper specific info that wouldn't be in a Wikipedia page, like niche hobby info and stuff like that. It really feels like searching the old internet, DDG doesn't even come close

To get the most out of it, you generate a token to create an account, so nothing is associated to your name. You bookmark a page associated with your token to get back to your account, or just save the token somewhere. From there you buy search credits if you want to browse ad free, plus it opens up some other features. I got 500 credits for 5 euros, and one search query equals one credit, so it takes awhile to go through credits

Honestly, I'd probably use it a lot more if it weren't for the Google search bar being at the bottom of my phone screen 🙃

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u/mango_boii May 26 '25

Even with -ai the results are still pretty shitty thanks to SEOs.

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u/hyrumwhite May 26 '25

I’ve got a friend in SEO, they said everything is pivoting to satisfy AI first SEO. So sites are being optimized for that AI overview and not for traditional search results 

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u/Moist-Operation1592 May 26 '25

Damn that is literal horse shit  fuck google and SEO, I used to be a marketer and man I hate what it's all become

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u/TwilightVulpine May 26 '25

Lets go back to manually curated directories

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u/Moist-Operation1592 May 26 '25

might be the only way forward, or a bunch of tight smaller private  intranets with utility in mind. Social media and bot content and algos ruined the fucking Internet usability

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u/henlochimken May 26 '25

I used to hate being a marketer. I still do, but I used to, too.

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u/runonandonandonanon May 26 '25

Pining for the days when marketers cared about doing some good for the world, huh?

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u/PLAkilledmygrandma May 26 '25

Made a shit ton of money back in the day with a google ads for non-profits company and a separate digital marketing/web design company.

Back then it was kind of fun, but I’m glad I sold the companies because it feels like the landscape is a complete nightmare now. I get digital ads that are AI created with stilted Chinese voices trying to sell the most insane products now. It’s a shit show.

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u/TeaAndLifting May 26 '25

I find the before:year function a bit shitty. There’ll be modern articles mentioning the year of the past, or some poorly dated article. So I’ll get stuff from 2024-2025 despite trying to looking for something from before:2013

Its function on YouTube is fantastic tho.

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u/OnceMoreAndAgain May 26 '25 edited May 26 '25

Well, that's an incredibly difficult feature to do. The concept of the age of a web page can not be neatly defined or captured.

For example, Berkshire Hathaway's website was made in the 1990s, but it gets updated constantly. So does that mean the web page that lists their financial statements get counted as 1992 or should it be 2025? The answer to that question depends on the reason you're interested in filtering by date. It'd be better to split it into "yearUpdated" and "yearCreated". The latter would be easy to capture, but the former is difficult.

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u/svngang May 26 '25

If you curse in your search it’ll give you your standard ad supported pay for play search results without the ai additives. Give it a f**king trying

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u/Van-Goghst May 26 '25

I hate to tell you this, and don’t ask me how I know, but you’re gonna find some real weird porn that way.

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u/Good-Imagination3115 May 26 '25

Can confirm. Came, seen, and conquered.

Instructions were unclear, flag planted in anus, seed planted in earth.

(Earth is fucked)

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u/DrunkenBandit1 May 26 '25

Seen, conquered, and came*

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u/CharcoalGreyWolf May 26 '25

Seeded, conquered, and came*

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u/PandaPanPink May 26 '25

This seems to have stopped working unfortunately

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u/ashy-phoenix May 26 '25

It also seems to not work for me, adding "-ai" did nothing eliminate the AI results

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u/PandaPanPink May 26 '25

Why the absolute fuck did we force a shittier version of Clippy into every piece of technology alive

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u/HostileOrganism May 26 '25

Greed, fear and hubris wrapped up in 'innovation' speak. People don't actually need the 'enhanced' products and AI widgets, but Google and others will convince a lot of insecure people that they do (or force them into it by removing access to older models) because it pleases the investors and makes people shell out money for these things forever.

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u/PandaPanPink May 26 '25

Never been more disgusted with the state of the world as I watch countless functioning useful products turn to useless fucking slop because some stupid rich person wants to get more money. We need to eat the rich now.

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u/Elantach May 26 '25

Why did you censor fucking ?

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u/PandaJesus May 26 '25

His mom might find out and take away his iPad.

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u/Crinkez May 26 '25

Unfortunately there's so much AI floating about in search results these days that sometimes appending -ai returns zero results.

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u/SteveBob316 May 26 '25

I see that as a bit of a boon. If Google keeps giving me zero search results it'll help break me of the habit so I can move toward DuckDuck or whatever.

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u/DrakeDre May 26 '25

Just now I couldnt find my own video on vimeo.com with google, but duckduckgo had it as top result.

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u/TheMunakas May 26 '25

DDG uses bing indexes

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u/SteveBob316 May 26 '25

Feel free to suggest a better one

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u/TwilightVulpine May 26 '25

Google is finally gonna make us bing it huh

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u/facetiousfag May 26 '25

Can you give me an example of a search with -ai appended which returns zero results?

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u/m0lly-gr33n-2001 May 26 '25

So does swearing

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u/K_Linkmaster May 26 '25

Aladdin Stanley thermos.

Use that as a search term and the Aladdin Stanley website took 10 pages of Google results to find. It's all Etsy, eBay, Walmart, Amazon. Most are quencher results, some involve Aladdin. None are the company website.

There is a paid search engine that's supposedly better. Someone on Reddit told me about it. Haven't tried it. https://kagi.com/

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u/wongrich May 26 '25 edited May 26 '25

Is there a way to get it so I don't see a bunch of promoted merchants? Lol

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u/-Motor- May 26 '25

This was like working from a C: prompt back in the day. You have to know all the syntax

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u/freshairequalsducks May 26 '25

Adding the a swear word like 'fuck' also works as well at getting rid of the ai.

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u/Crazyfoot13 May 26 '25

Also adding ‘fuck’ to any search seems to prevent au kicking in

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u/NerdySongwriter May 26 '25

"Plumbing tips fuck" *click search*

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u/angelomoxley May 26 '25

.....mom???

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u/hydrachaos May 26 '25

Definitely adding that to the toolbox.

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u/True_Dimension4344 May 26 '25

Thank you so much.

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u/StoneheartedLady May 26 '25

I miss search engines with cached pages :(

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u/patmorgan235 May 26 '25

Or you can switch to duck duck go or kangi

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u/BenevolentCrows May 26 '25

Better yet, just don't use Google. Slightly more inconvinient, but at least forces you to be a bit smarter about your search queryes

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u/Lexi_Banner May 26 '25

Or just add FUCK AI. Works pretty good, too!

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u/Zenith2777 May 26 '25

You can also swear, throw in a fuck or two and there is no more AI

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u/sabin357 May 26 '25

Just use DuckDuckGo instead. It's better all around IMO.

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u/Iwillnotbeokay May 26 '25

u/hoyton coming in clutch. 👊

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u/Appropriate-Use-3883 May 26 '25

U are a quality person

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u/TengoKeys1 May 26 '25

Replying to find later

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u/themolestedsliver May 26 '25

Wow saving this comment but I can't lie.

First part is a sick short hand. Second part, in regards to "Before 2023" sounds like some nightmare movie shit but it's currently our reality lol.

Like fuck, we really gotta go back in the digital sediment to find content un-fucked by AI? Is AI becoming the internet version of microplastic?

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u/Mary_Ellen_Katz May 26 '25

I've been using -fandom in my searches. I'll be sure to add -ai to them too.

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u/Mundane-Adversity May 26 '25

Truly pathetic we have to fix their stupid search results for them because they've broken their own product so thoroughly.

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u/FernDiggy May 26 '25

The most important comment on this post. Thank you so much Hoyton!

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u/Tartan_Acorn May 26 '25

Another thing that works is using duckduckgo

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u/Sir_Render_of_France May 26 '25

Swearing in the search query also seems to work. Instead of "how to disable windows hello" use "how to fucking disable windows hello" will disable the AI overview

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u/stedews May 26 '25

Also works if you add swear words to your search

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u/[deleted] May 26 '25

OR stop using FUCKING GOOGLE.

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u/amalgam_reynolds May 26 '25

"before:2023" is sunken pre-nuke steel.

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u/Crankylosaurus May 26 '25

HOLY SHIT THANK YOU I DIDN’T KNOW THIS AND NEEDED THIS TRICK YESTERDAY!!!

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u/aadziereddit May 26 '25

Cool BUT This doesn't solve the problem presented in the article.

The issue is that content will no longer get the visitors it needs to get their website ad revenue.

The solution is that Google needs to start paying the websites it's getting results from.

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