Frustration is growing with the Google AI Overviews feature, how to disable it

Ever since Google turned on its AI-powered search feature, many people have tried and failed to turn off the often incorrect AI reviews feature in regular search results. Unfortunately, you can’t. However, there are ways to disable it using the new “Internet” search mode, which we explain below.

AI Overviews, also known as “Search Generative Experience”, is a new Google search feature that summarizes web content using internal LLM (Large Language Models).

Google says AI reviews only appear when the search engine believes it can provide more value than traditional blue links.

If you’re logged into Google and searching for common topics, like how to install one of the latest Windows 11 updates, Google’s AI will transcribe content from independent websites and summarize it in its own words.

This feature may sound good in theory, but Google’s AI integration has a few quality issues, including causing a slight delay in generating a response and, more problematically, sometimes displaying incorrect information.

For example, Google AI Overviews recently asked searchers to drink two liters of urine when asked how to pass kidney stones fast.

While initially released as a selection of Search Labs experiments, Google recently began rolling out AI Overviews to everyone in the United States whether they want it or not, with other countries coming soon.

Google says AI reviews make people “use search more and be happier with their results,” but that doesn’t seem to be the case, based on numerous questions on Google’s support forum about how to disable the feature.

“I find the results very repetitive, often wrong, and not at all what I’m looking for, but take up so much space and get in the way. I just want them gone,” wrote a user trying to disable AI Overviews.

“Every result I got from AI reviews was wrong. I’m more than capable of misinterpreting internet articles on my own, and I can probably come at least a little closer to real understanding than an AI because I do have cognitive abilities. processes,” another user wrote.

According to posts on the Google forums, early feedback on Google AI Overviews was negative, with people finding the feature unnecessary and often misleading.

Unfortunately, there’s no way to disable it now that it’s outside of Search Labs, and Google has been quick to block the support threads for many people asking how to do it.

Since the Google search we all fell in love with 26 years ago is no more, now filled with endless possibilities, sponsored results, and shopping results, the company recently introduced a new web search option to bring back the old search experience.

When using Google’s new web search, search results will no longer be cluttered with many of the features we usually see, including Top News, AI Reviews, and shopping lists.

For those who don’t want to see AI Overviews, we can use this new web search feature to get rid of Google’s AI feature.

How to remove Google AI Overviews

If you don’t like Google AI Overviews, you can force Google to always show web search results without AI overviews, videos, images, and other search features.

To do this, change the search engine in your web browser to a specific Google entry point that triggers the Web filter by following these steps:

1. Open Google Chrome, click the three-dot menu in the upper-right corner, and select Settings.
2. Scroll down to search engine” and click Manage search engines and site searches.
3. Click Add next to Site Search.
4. In Art Add a search engine dialog, enter the name of your search engine (eg “Google Web”). For quick access, enter a keyword to quickly use this search engine from the address bar (for example, “Internet”).
5. Change the URL to {google:baseURL}/search?udm=14&q=%s.
6. Click Add.
7. Click on the three-dot menu next to the new search engine you created and select Make default.
8. The new search engine will now be displayed by default under Search Engines.
9. Close the settings page.

Now when you search from the address bar in Google Chrome, it will perform the search using Google’s new web search feature. To go back to your previous Google search, simply go back to your search settings and set Google as your default search engine.

The general process remains the same whether you’re using Chrome or Edge, but the location in your browser settings may differ.

If you don’t want to change your search settings manually, you can also install a Google Chrome extension called Hide AI Reviews from the Chrome Web Store.

This extension allows you to hide generative search reviews from Google.com without changing settings manually.

On mobile devices, you will need to install Firefox and change its search engine settings to enable the above entry point.