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    The best way to use Google Search with out AI: the ‘udm=14’ work round

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    It’s laborious to conceive given how standard and entrenched in trendy society it’s, however the Google Search of at the moment could be very totally different than the identical product even just some years again.

    The obvious change in latest occasions has been the addition of generative AI search outcomes, also referred to as “AI Overview.” Previously an experimental possibility known as “Search Generative Experience” that customers needed to elect by Google Labs, the addition of those outcomes — generated from complete fabric each time you search utilizing Google’s Gemini AI fashions — search to summarize and pull out probably the most related and essential info primarily based in your search question.

    Google is making this the default search expertise now within the U.S. (and shortly, around the globe) following its I/O convention final week, a bid to compete and offset the rise of rivals resembling Perplexity and OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

    But many customers have overtly complained in regards to the new Google Gen AI search outcomes, noting that they’re incessantly inaccurate — even dangerously so, at occasions.

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    Happily, there’s a resolution for these customers in search of to return to a extra “pure” and pristine Google Search expertise unmarred by Gen AI outcomes.

    Google added a brand new “Web” tab to its search engine on the high that strips away all of the Gen AI outcomes and even its older “Featured Snippets,” which ripped textual content out of internet pages and reproduced them on the high of the search engine outcomes web page (SERP). It additionally appears to take away most advertisements/sponsored posts.

    Screenshot 2024 05 20 at 6.27.36%E2%80%AFPM

    Nonetheless, there isn’t any solution to get this selection to remain because the default on Google, a minimum of not formally. You need to search, see the AI outcomes, after which tab over each time.

    Screenshot 2024 05 20 at 6.27.06%E2%80%AFPM

    Whereas navigating to this tab each time you wish to search will be cumbersome, my previous colleague Ernie Smith of the weblog Tedium has discovered a intelligent work round that some customers are cheering.

    As he writes:

    …Is there anything you can do to minimize the pain of having to click the “Web” possibility buried in a menu each single time?

    The reply to that query is sure. Google doesn’t make it straightforward, as a result of its URLs appear extra-loaded with cruft nowadays, however by including a URL parameter to your search—on this case, “udm=14”—you may get on to the Internet ends in a search.

    In reality, so long as you set your default search engine in your browser or bookmark the next URL: “https://www.google.com/search?q=%s&udm=14” you need to be capable to get the Internet, Gen AI-free model of Google each time you search.

    On X, customers liked Smith’s discovery and are eagerly embracing it:

    It will likely be fascinating to see how vast this work round unfold. If sufficient individuals select to go this route, will Google rethink making Gen AI summarized search outcomes the brand new default, and change again to this extra uncluttered and “purer” model of Search — an inventory of “blue links”?

    Time will inform.

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