I tried it too and learned two things.
First, theres no official way to disable AI overviews.
Luckily, there are workarounds to get rid of those experimental search results on Google.
Lucas Gouveia / How-To Geek | Marco Lazzarini /Shutterstock
Just like you cant disable carousels or snippets, you cant turn off AI overviews.
Google controls when and where AI overviews show up.
There is a slider button in Search Labs labeled AI Overviews.
you might find it by clicking the flask icon on the Google homepage.
Youre not out of options though.
There are plenty of ways to get the old Google search back.
It filters everything out, leaving only the classic ten blue links.
There are multiple ways you’re free to use that filter to avoid AI results.
Ill show you two.
The web filter also gets rid of snippets, images, and knowledge panels though.
So if you want to keep them, give the other solutions on this list a try.
If its not visible to you, try clicking the three-dot menu to show additional filters.
As soon as you click it, the page should reload and display a list of links.
Any time you use that search engine, there won’t be any generative AI in sight.
First, open your web client configs and find the default search section.
Im using Google Chrome for this demonstration.
Click Add to create a new search shortcut.
Hit Save and check that it shows up in the list.
Just click “Activate” to get it up and running.
What About the UDM14 Website?
Don’t enter sensitive personal information into them.
Content blockers are special net surf tool extensions that hide or block specific content from web pages.
This isn’t dangerous or unsafe, but it does mean you might have to tweak the filter occasionally.
you’ve got the option to grab uBlock Origin for your web client fromthe official website.
After installing it, poke the red shield icon and snag the three gear icons in the corner.
Itll kick off the dashboard.
Hop over to the My filters tab and paste the following line of code.
Click Apply Changes and youre done.
Exclude AI Results With An Operator
Search operators are special strings that Google uses torefine search.
You canalsouse it to exclude specific results.
The excluding operator is -.
Chrome Web Store and Mozilla Add-ons both have a few good options.
Im going to demonstrate how with Chrome.
fire up the Chrome Web Store and searchHide Google AI Overviews, oropen the extension link directly.
Click Add to Chrome and wait for it to show up in the Extensions tab.
Remember that not all web app extensions are safe.
As a rule of thumb, verify any extension you install isnt asking for any unnecessary permissions.
Withphone browsers that support extensions, you might even set up a content blocker filter.
Theres one more way to make Google Web the default on your Chrome web client.
Itll work on both Android and iOS devices.
As with UDM14, you should treat TenBlueLinks with a bit of caution.
First, open thetenbluelinks.orgwebsite.
Leave that tab and search for something on a new tab.
Now open options from the three dots in the corner and tap “Search Engine.”
Youll see Google Web with the Google icon and the tenbluelinks.org URL.
Select TenBlueLinks as your search engine, and itll filter AI overviews from your searches.
TenBlueLinks
Now you know all the ways to banish AI overviews from your Google searches.
