How to Turn Off Google AI search

Maybe you have already noticed that the search results in Google have changed in the last few months. Instead of websites and maybe a featured snippet, you now often get an AI Overview. I have also tested it out, and I don’t like it (for multiple reasons).

But the biggest problem with AI overview is that it’s often wrong or incomplete, and besides the AI Overview, we now also have to scroll past the People also Ask block, YouTube block, and Reddit/Quora blocks.

So the big question is, how do you turn off the Google AI Overview?

Turn Off Google AI Overview

I am not going to explain how the AI overview is created, just let’s take a look at what options you have to turn off Google AI.

To be straightforward, you can’t really turn off Google AI overview. It’s enabled for everybody in the default search results. However, you can choose to view only web results (like how Google used to be).

So it seems that it’s possible to set the web results as your default search engine. To do this we can add a custom site search option. But let’s first take a look how you can quickly switch to the web results only:

1. Under the search bar, click on More
2. Choose Web

With the Web filter enabled you won’t see all the AI overviews, shopping results, and all the other “helpful” content blocks.

To set the web results as your default search option, we will need to open your browser settings:

1. Click on the 3 dots in the top-right corner and go to settings
2. Open the Search engine settings
3. Click on Manage search engines and site search
4. Scroll down to Site Search and click on Add
5. Enter the following details
   • Search engine: Google Web
   • Shortcut: Google.com
   • URL: {google:baseURL}/search?udm=14&q=%s
6. Click on Add when done
7. Under search engines, set your newly created Google web search engine as default by clicking on the 3 dots and choose set as default

Using a Browser Extension

While I prefer to use the web filter on Google, I can understand that it’s quite annoying to select it every time you open Google. So another option is to use a browser extension. This will only disable (hide) the AI Overview, so you will still see the People also Ask, and shopping blocks.

If you open the Chrome Web Store, you can find the Hide Google AI Overview extension. Just simply install the extension to turn off Google AI Search.

Using a Different Search Engine

If you don’t want to install a browser extension or click on the Web filter every time you search for something, then your only option is to use a different search engine. Luckily, there are quite a few good ones these days.

Bing is the second-most popular search engine at the moment and is actually on the rise. The advantage of Bing is that the AI part (Copilot) is on a separate tab. So you can still easily use AI if you want, but your default search actions will return just normal results.

Another good option is DuckDuckGo. This search engine is focused on privacy and won’t keep track of what you search or which sites you visit.

To change your default search engine, go to your browser settings. The steps for Chrome are:

• Click on the 3 dots and choose Settings
• Select search engine
• Change the search engine to Bing or DuckDuckGo

Wrapping Up

Google has always been the number one browser to go to, but with all the recent changes in the search results, I find it a lot easier to find what I am looking for with search engines like DuckDuckGo.

It would be great if we could set the web filter as the default search results, but I don’t think that is going to happen soon.

If you have any other tips, just let me know in the comments.