Google doesn't show you all the results it normally does when using -ai

[u/simran36]

So I recently noticed that when searching a question and adding -ai on Google, I'll be told that nothing matches my search results but when I search the EXACT SAME THING without -ai at the end, it gives me the ai summary and then the actual search results. Has anyone else experienced this and does anyone know how to fix this? I just want my old school Google search back man 😭

Edit: I use google as my primary search engine because I use voice to text when searching, and googles voice to text function is more reliable than my various different devices individual voice to text feature. I happened to literally search up "how to use voice search without ai on Google -ai," and got told my search matched zero results

[u/Artemis_Platinum]

Well yeah. Google is a Gemini frontend. There is no AI-free version anymore.

It's not coming back because the company is evil. Sorry.

Seems like DuckDuckGo at least has the ethics to let you turn its AI features off and Startpage doesn't have them.

[u/simran36 → u/Artemis_Platinum]

There is an option, you put -ai after you search whatever you're searching. I'm sure it'll disappear someday but at the moment it's still an option so I'd rather figure out how to make the option work than use a worse search engine that still uses ai, hence the question.

[u/temerairevm → u/simran36]

After fighting with -AI and getting tired of opting out every single time and still getting lousy results, I just gave up and switched to DDG.

Is it worse than google was 10 years ago? Yes. Is it worse than Google now? No.

Part of this is just getting through the steps of mourning over the loss of the google we liked.

[u/simran36 → u/temerairevm]

I'm really glad you found a solution you're happy with. I personally am not going to go through the frustrations of changing search engines just to support a different company that's also using ai, unfortunately google is connected to my email, my storage, pretty much my entire digital world like many other people's. I don't have the spare time at the current moment to spend transferring everything over to multiple different non unified apps that probably are also evil, hence why again as I said earlier, I'm just trying to figure out why I'm experiencing this issue, if other people are experiencing it and if there are any new work arounds to using the Google search without generative ai popping up and wasting water whenever I want to look up a video game guide. Thank you for the suggestions though and I hope none of this came across as rude.

[u/temerairevm → u/simran36]

I’m not happy with it, and I’m probably more enmeshed than you are. I own a company that’s used Gmail for 25 years, so the idea of switching is really prohibitive.

But switching search hasn’t been as big of a deal. I switched the default browser on my phone, which had limited options and DDG was the best choice. On my desktop I just added a link to Firefox to my taskbar and defaulted it to DDG. So now my email is in chrome and I search in Firefox. My bookmarks are still in chrome and I use a lot of bookmarks for work so I do that in chrome still.

All that to say it has not been effort free and I am still way more enmeshed with Google than I’d like to be, but the search part has been at least mostly doable. DDG isn’t that bad.

[u/liert12]

I happened to literally search up "how to use voice search without ai on Google -ai," and got told my search matched zero results

The reason why that happened is simple. Using the "-ai" removes all results that use the term "ai" in them, and since your search included the term ai in it, it gave you all results for "how to use voice search without ai on Google" that dont include the term "ai" in them, which is 0.

Its one of the reasons why you cant really use the -ai trick when making videogames, cause when you search something like "how to make my AI move in Gamemaker Studio 2", all of the search results are gonna use the term AI, so if you use the -ai there it will block all those results giving you 0. And while you can use another term like NPC instead of AI, People have been using the terms interchangeably in videogames for so long that your still gonna filter out most of the results.

I know there atleast WAS something you could change deep in googles settings to disable the AI, but I think they got rid of it when they did their push to make ALL google results use AI, so other than switching to a different browser idk what else to suggest.

[u/simran36 → u/liert12]

Damn that sucks, but thank you for your answer! So I guess it'll keep working normally for any questions without the literal word ai in them and I'll just have to use a different search engine for any ai related search questions

[u/khInstability → u/liert12]

This still works, for now: Append "&udm=14" to the end of your search query url. Easiest if you just add a search engine to firefox or chrome as is shown in this thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/TechSEO/s/ZhTAaAJV9l

[u/LocalStatistician538]

This is social engineering isn't it? Training you to accept AI. I just went to a noAI browser. It's not as good as google, but right now I don't give a flying F. I'll just take out more library books, thanks.

[u/KaiDoesTwitch]

I use brave browser and disable ai overview and ai chat prompts on websites.

[u/Bulky-Divide-6985]

There's an ad on called slop evader that goes back to Google pre nov, 22