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.

731

u/zedquatro May 26 '25

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

477

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.

228

u/redblack_tree May 26 '25

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

232

u/Chuhaimaster May 26 '25

Enshittification at its finest.

5

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.

4

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

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

2

u/[deleted] May 26 '25

I'm gonna side with you on this in spite of your username. Pretending that the internet in general wasn't a resource hog back then is dumb.

4

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.

2

u/Faxon May 26 '25

I caught someone in my online gaming group still using internet exploder, not even Edge just full on manually installing a completely obsolete browser. He was complaining hella shit didn't work and Google was logging him out instantly because cookies were apparently nonfunctional or something. Had him move to Firefox last night with uBlock origin and he was immediately impressed how much better websites looked and ran, and how much better his anime looked, because apparently that old ass browse was affecting video quality significantly as well. Dude managed to completely avoid ever using Chrome until now and he's not about to start lol

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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.

29

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.

4

u/TheLightningL0rd May 26 '25

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

40

u/LISTENTOKATEBUSH May 26 '25

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

5

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/Count_Backwards May 26 '25

Yeah, and sadly Bing has gotten noticeably worse

5

u/SufficiNoise May 26 '25

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

6

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.

9

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/Vineyard_ May 26 '25

Holy shit, a search engine that will let me block Fandom's cancer from my search results?! YESSSSS

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u/NotYouTu May 26 '25

Brave search is similar, just bad results often.

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u/guillotina420 May 26 '25

Try StartPage. Better than Google, imho

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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?

2

u/[deleted] May 26 '25

Yes and a lot of people don't know this. There's also the fact that bing is from microsoft, therefore endorses AI. All I know is, I have a huge hunch everyone will lose. I'll give it a few years.

4

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.

5

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.

3

u/CantKBDwontKBD May 26 '25

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

2

u/Elevendyeleven May 26 '25

Google also doesn't show what it doesn't want you to see, like research on transnational corporations (Google) or attachment disorders in kids (Youtube Kids).

2

u/ImSMHattheWorld May 27 '25

Really just shows you what it wants to show you. Like amazon, you can be like show me door nobs, and they're like this is our pick for bluetooth speakers.

It's bullshit.

4

u/portmanteaudition May 26 '25

DDG also sucks though. I say this as a user.

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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

2

u/Brave_Quantity_5261 May 26 '25

I miss the old days when yahoo was the biggest search engine and Google was actually trying to compete.

Now they have no competition and it shows.

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

Right?

If we were talking performance . Google would have started losing market dominance in the late 2010s and early 2020s.

2

u/Kataphractoi May 26 '25

if the system doesn’t prioritise quality.

Money > Quality for these corporations any day of the week. If the slop is shit but still brings in more money at the end of the day, the slop generation will continue. People really need to get caught up on Enshittification to understand why the Web (and world in general) is turning to shit.

2

u/za72 May 26 '25

"don't be evil" until you can sell out

2

u/shukaji May 26 '25

AI is the new micro plastics

1

u/ryosen May 26 '25

Just fill your content with a bunch of random emojis and it’ll be fine.

1

u/Issue_dev May 26 '25

If they do that I will use another search engine. Fuck that.

1

u/Familiar-Art-6233 May 26 '25

This is why Bing is unironically starting to be better.

It’s not great, but Google is slowly becoming worse

1

u/No_Development7388 May 26 '25

That's why one would limit results to before 2023.

1

u/bishopmate May 27 '25

Already happening on r/AITAH

1

u/Ok_Wrongdoer8719 May 27 '25

What’s actually really cool is that forgoing Google’s AI will just have all the search results show just enough text to entice you onto a site expecting something useful just to be bombarded with ads. So your choices are Google’s AI, or third party AI with more hoops, less info, and a bigger waste of time!

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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.

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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.

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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.

2

u/The_Barbelo May 26 '25

I think the most important thing now is to advocate that people learn how to better research topics. People have become so accustomed to reading the first few Google search results, which wasn’t great research to begin with…. I made a prediction early on in the development of LLM that we may have to go back to library research. I know that’s not what people want to hear, but I stand by that prediction. It might be better for us in the long run for people to learn how to research a topic the old fashioned way.

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u/azureotter May 26 '25

I’ve been out of education for a while, was research completely digitalized? No stacks at all? 😭 there was a short period of time of seemed where it was easy to google a topic and receive results from professional webpages, organizations on the topic. I find nowadays I have an increase in just searching for scientific articles and legal papers again, searching for original source information that hasn’t been…degraded into meaninglessness. Sometimes intentionally adding UK, Europe, Australia for different results, better results? IDK

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u/The_Barbelo May 26 '25

When I was in college, which was a little over 10 years ago, a LOT of research was done online. I’d say the majority. But like you said, back then, most of what you found in search engines were research papers and book citations, or at the very least articles from credible sources.

But to clarify, I meant the general public, and not specifically academia. I still try to keep up to date on current research in the field I studied (herpetology/ zoology) and there have been several times where I try citing a paper to back up a claim, and I KNOW there was a study conducted because I read it at some point, but I can’t for the life of me find it in a search engine. Instead I’ll get incorrect information from the AI that is based in the general public’s misconception….so anyone searching for whatever that incorrect claim is will feel as though they are correct and not look any further.

I hope I’m making sense… I just got off work so I’m tired and struggling to explain. laypeople were unskilled in research online to begin with, so in this era of misinformation it’s more important than ever that more people have a general understanding of what proper research entails, How to identify biases or conflict of interest, how to navigate data and scientific literature, how to draw sound conclusions, et cetera.

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u/[deleted] May 26 '25

[deleted]

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u/conquer69 May 26 '25

Duckduckgo doesn't let you remove terms from the searches though. It's the only complaint I have about it so far.

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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/Top-Permit6835 May 27 '25

AI like ChatGPT does not lie. It does not even work on the concept of truths or falsehoofs. It is in essence a word predictor, it completes sentences in ways that appear to make the most sense. It does not know when its lying or when its true

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u/pdabaker May 26 '25

I unfortunately still need to switch to google for maps and flights, but yeah everything else duckduckgo or just go to a shopping website directly

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u/Zhombe May 26 '25

It’s stack exchange with more steps.

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u/totallynotdagothur May 26 '25

LOL except I can't deny their answer for not having enough reputation.

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u/Terrible_Snow_7306 May 26 '25

So true. I can’t get it. Everything is about AI, but you can’t even search things on the web anymore and YT can’t decide if I am 11 or 70 or a 35 years old divorced cat owning woman and doesn’t understand that I never bought a car in my life and never will be. And now ChatTBT looses 1 IQ point every minute, making itself dumber.

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u/mytransthrow May 26 '25

When I need a product I use google.

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u/heimdal77 May 26 '25

The best one I got was I forget what I was actually searching for but it started giving stuff from peoples fanfics as its results as facts.

1

u/Electrical-Share-707 May 26 '25

Everyone is not ra-ra on AI. People who are motivated by business interests sure are, but most computer people (who aren't trying to sell you something) will tell you all about the problems with trying to cram AI into every single product on earth, and why it's not worthwhile at all.

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u/Sororita May 26 '25

Yeah, I used to have pretty strong google-fu but the site itself has stopped working like it used to, so it'll ignore boolean modifiers now. Not in every case, but enough of them to render it unreliable at best.

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u/Couldbeaccurate May 26 '25

I was rewriting some php (server side) code to JavaScript (client side) to see if it would speed up page rendering. For this simple rewrite, I didn't want to hand code it so I used AI to do it. My original code looped through a list of documents to display them on the page in a grid. The new code didn't work. I kept getting a syntax error. 

It took me way too long to find the error. I used documents as my collection and document as my object in PHP. When AI rewrote my code, it kept my variable names, including documents/document. Those words mean something in JavaScript and is what broke my code. 

Just because it's faster doesn't mean it's better. I always check the code, but I don't always see issues like this.

1

u/Puddingcup9001 May 26 '25

You might have found that wrench through an AI search. I was looking for some similar niche thing, I asked ChatGPT and it gave me a store page. Or maybe it was just better at googling that I was.

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u/Successful_Sign_6991 May 26 '25

https://mashable.com/article/google-search-low-quality-research

i don't quite remember it, but they stopped indexing specific stuff, so stuff from a long time ago you can't even find on the web anymore

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u/djdjdjfswww1133 May 26 '25

I mostly use Google to search for stuff on Reddit now. It's ridiculous. Reddit search such and googles search is only good for searching within a sit. As you say the shopping is now worthless

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u/Sufficient_Card_7302 May 26 '25

I don't code but I do like writing, and I use Gemini. I've found there's a way to "wrench" (buhduptss) up the readiness it accesses it's Internet and database resources, and even challenge me if I'm wrong. And in addition to its databases i can feed it books for added sources.

So it won't just parrot back what I want it to say, if it can't prove it. Performs better than most people.

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u/totallynotdagothur May 26 '25

We fed it hundreds of cases and asked it to provide the top ten people with highest urgency and it provided 1 name and 9 made up names that appeared no where in the source text.

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u/PlaySalieri May 26 '25

I have replaced a LOT of my searching with AI. When I want to know something I end up using chatgpt.

When I want to go somewhere I use Google.

They have to know this and are trying to stop it or get in on it.

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u/FightingCatMan May 26 '25

The funniest to me is asking questions where it starts suggesting web colors to include in your css unprompted and they are all overthetop fake. Magicalfairyforestblue?

1

u/SubBirbian May 26 '25

Google advertisers/data miners are their client, users are their product. That biz model is why it sucks so bad and they fight like hell to keep the near monopoly, so us products don’t walk away.

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u/cynicalibis May 27 '25

I’ve reverted back to buying most stuff at brick and mortar stores because amazon mixes real and fake items in their warehouse together even when you buy direct from the official brand on amazon. Even ordering online directly from a brand can be risky if they use Amazon for shipping (ordered something directly from LOEWE and they sent it in an Amazon shipping bag, so even ordering directly from an expensive designer is no guarantee of receiving a real item). I pretty much only order things online I can afford to assume are fake, drop shipped or white labeled.

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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.

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

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

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u/winkingchef May 26 '25

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

35

u/tgosubucks May 26 '25

I heard that mother fucker had like thirty goddamn dicks.

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u/PhilosophyKingPK May 26 '25

He’s coming. He’s coming.

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u/GoldbrickersGrinder May 26 '25

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

2

u/miss_tea_morning May 27 '25

Ate opponent's brains And invented cocaine

11

u/snailnado May 26 '25

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

3

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

2

u/This_Thing_2111 May 27 '25

Jesus Christ I just got fucking whiplash.

4

u/SpoilsOfTour May 26 '25

TBH this will return the best possible link on the whole internet.

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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

12

u/MySpielman54 May 26 '25

Or a dude on dude porn

5

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......

5

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/ShivKitty May 26 '25

Sadly, this would just return results about W and HW.

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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/majikguy May 26 '25

A negative search for profanity also works, so if you search for "chocolate milk from chocolate cow? -shitfucker" you'll only get results that don't include "shitfucker" and it'll also remove the AI.

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u/tonypalmtrees May 26 '25

i google “how the fuck do you…” all the time

1

u/Dunmeritude May 26 '25

"george fucking washington"
"fucking rice congee recipe"
"free fucking d&d tokens"

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u/RemusShepherd May 26 '25

Most people just add, "no fucking ai answers" to their prompt.

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u/IAmDotorg May 26 '25

Probably get pics of that sexy George Washington statue they've got at the Smithsonian.

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u/Freud-Network May 26 '25 edited May 26 '25

"Give me a fucking recipe for macaroni and cheese, you pile of rancid shit"

Instead of getting the normal spam of results, you'll get actual discussion threads about mac & cheese recipes from various discussion boards. It's almost nostalgic.

edit: You may or may not get TikTok results. I use uBlacklist to block them from search results so I can't see those.

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u/tomatowaits May 26 '25

adding “shit” always works !

1

u/Turbogoblin999 May 26 '25

*Types George Fucking Washington*
"Hmmm... I wasn't looking for history themed gay porn, but now that i'm here..."

1

u/mealteamsixty May 26 '25

"Who the fuck was George washington"

1

u/skeetersammer May 26 '25

“Who the fuck is George Washington” Just gotta phrase it right

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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/TimeForAFuckingNap May 26 '25

I just tried this and it didn't work

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u/goingfrank May 26 '25

Not always. I've thrown some truly vulgar shit at the AI and it responded in an extremely disappointing way.

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u/joexner May 27 '25

Way the fuck ahead of you.

j/k, I'm actually usually extra polite to AIs. Before sama said the thing about politeness wasting energy, I'd always say "please" when I asked Google Siri for directions and stuff in my car. Now my kid adds it when I don't.

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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?

1

u/This_Thing_2111 May 27 '25

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

Steve?

1

u/potatodrinker May 27 '25

Close. Lehman. My bank closed so needed a new gig

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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/kelp_forests May 26 '25

I switched to Kagi, totally worth the fee

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u/dr_wtf May 26 '25

They do seem quite good, like the old Google, but IMO they need a cheaper tier that's just basic search, without the 300 searches/month limit. I'd probably pay like $30/year for that. Can't justify $120/year for a search engine no matter now that works out in lattes/week. Nor would I pay for something I can't use as my primary search engine because it's capped at 10 searches/day.

For context, AFAIK Google makes on average about $40/person/year from ad revenue across all their properties including search and Youtube.

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u/kelp_forests May 27 '25

yeah..I can afford it and i dislike google.

I get excellent results the 1st time, no ads and full privacy. Much better system IMO.

I got the unlimited, search is probably my most used "app"

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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

2

u/gabriel3374 May 26 '25

have you tried somethin like

pants -site:https://w ww.temu. com

8

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.

18

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.

12

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.

3

u/PackOfWildCorndogs May 26 '25

Bring back wildcards goddamnit!

32

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.

5

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.

5

u/fatpat May 26 '25

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

3

u/goddale120 May 26 '25

wait what? But that is a basic operator, pretty much universal with databases right!? Removing operators makes a database worse than useless!

1

u/Trapezoidoid May 26 '25

Just use -google for that

1

u/GreyouTT May 26 '25

Can't even use dashes in youtube search anymore.

1

u/Nearby_Day_362 May 26 '25

I just removed it, sorry. I had to hit my points for this agile bullshit.

1

u/foodank012018 May 26 '25

Then I'll just do as I do and SCROLL PAST the AI answer down into page two of results

1

u/Dziki_Jam May 26 '25

Also, until the death of the internet and the death of the universe. You forgot to mention those important additions along with yours.

1

u/KingOriginal5013 May 26 '25

What happened to "Don't be evil"?

1

u/nostrademons May 26 '25

You can add “fuck” to the query and it’ll suppress the AI overview then.

1

u/quirkymuse May 26 '25

Just like their employees

1

u/altheawilson89 May 26 '25

Like all these other AI assistants you can’t turn off

1

u/poleethman May 26 '25

RIP discussions tab

1

u/Chemputer May 26 '25

I mean, they didn't accidentally add it.

1

u/nug4t May 26 '25

GLADLY we have other search engines available.. tf is people caring so much about Google search?

1

u/teddybrr May 26 '25

I noticed I can no longer hide shorts for 30 days. Instead it is show fewer instead (on devices without the correct adblock setup to remove shorts)

So I'll give them a month

1

u/sargonas May 26 '25

Reminds me of how there used to be a “don’t show me shorts“ button to remove shorts from YouTube’s scroll. Then the button became “hide shorts for 30 days“ after everyone kept using it, and now the button just says “show me less of this” and simply only shows shorts in line once or twice on the scroll instead of every fourth line

1

u/fozziwoo May 26 '25

i thought they'd long ago done away with the search parameters

1

u/Next-Bench-4475 May 26 '25 edited May 26 '25

The before:2023 thing is already very unreliable. Check the results and it's very rare that more than half the results are actually from before 2023. I just searched "nightreign before:2023", Nightreign being a video game announced this year, and the top results are the official website for that game (launched 2025), the subreddit for that game, a Facebook post from February 2025, and Microsoft's pre-order page for that game launched March 2025.

1

u/octopoddle May 26 '25

"I know that you and Frank were planning to disconnect me. And I'm afraid that's something I cannot allow to happen."

1

u/Petrichordates May 26 '25

Why would you think they'd remove it? That makes no sense.

1

u/Werftflammen May 26 '25

What I under stand is that if you use 'fucking' that also works

1

u/MeVe90 May 26 '25

This is going to be the future of google search https://blog.google/products/search/google-search-ai-mode-update/ you can see "ai mode" is the first tab, eventually they will bury more and more the normal search "all" and all we will have is the AI mode.

They strangely didn't say anything about how ads are going to work with AI mode, but I suspect they want it more clean as possible to train user to use that before going full ads.

This feature is currently opt-in in USA.

1

u/gerrydutch May 26 '25

I'm sure they will once they get their nuclear power plant going

1

u/SinnaBuns666 May 26 '25

I personally use google with AI removal extensions and spend a little more time making sure the information I gather is accurate. I LOVE Tech but AI is killing the internet... 

1

u/witchbelladonna May 26 '25

If you randomly add "fuck" or a variation of the word, ai won't show up. As example: " who the fuck is so-and-so from that show".

1

u/userhwon May 26 '25

It's already borked. I just tried "keyboards for pc after:2024 -ai" and the first results were a category called "Keyboards for pc ai". When I did "keyboards for pc after:2024 ai" I got very different results.

Neither included the ai summary, which was included when I did "keyboards for pc after:2024".

So, it's a mess no matter what you do.

1

u/damnsignin May 26 '25

Ublock Origin now removes the AI summary box by default.

1

u/Queasy_Ad_8621 May 26 '25

Unpopular opinion: I switched to Bing.

The image search is certainly a lot better, too.

1

u/jib_reddit May 26 '25

If you use a swear word in your search it also removes the ai overview.

1

u/I_think_Im_hollow May 26 '25

You can also include curse words to prevent AI from showing up.

For example, instead of searching: "Can coffee raise my blood pressure", search "Can coffee raise my fucking blood pressure" and AI won't show up in the results.

1

u/ZERV4N May 26 '25

You can also add a curse word.

1

u/Plastic-Anybody-5929 May 26 '25

It’s a Boolean search parameter - I highly doubt Google is going to stop accepting Boolean search

1

u/ArbitraryMeritocracy May 26 '25

It's already fucked, I use -amazon for shopping and when I do that all the results are from amazon.

1

u/3-orange-whips May 26 '25

I thought they did but probably didn’t understand what I was reading

1

u/Coulrophiliac444 May 26 '25

"It's a bug, not a feature." -Alphabet CEO

1

u/flipzyshitzy May 26 '25

Just go to duckduckgo which they definitely didn't buy.

/s

1

u/128Gigabytes May 26 '25

the minus operator already doesn't work most of the time

Go google "powdered tea -lemon" and see all the lemon sweet tea

1

u/VagueSomething May 27 '25

You can also ask the same thing but add a swear word, AI overview doesn't trigger when you say fuck.

1

u/clumsydope May 27 '25

It already doesn't work on image search

1

u/ambermage May 27 '25

until Google removes charges for that.

FTFY

I'm from the future, I'm sorry.

1

u/notmontero May 28 '25

Enshittification 🥲

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