HN Explorer

Tell HN: Use "-f**k" to kill Google AI Overview

104 points by camillomiller ↗ HN
Not sure this is the right way to post this, but I'm sure quite a few people are as frustrated as I am by the AI enshittification of Google search and would like to know this.

I accidentally discovered in a fit of rage against Google Search that if you add an expletive to a search term, the SERP will avoid showing ads and also an AI overview.

The good thing is that it works also with the "-" (minus) operator, so you can make sure the expletive is actually not included in the result pages.

Try it yourself: search for a fairly generic query that gives you ads and AI overview, and add "-f*k" at the end, uncensored of course.

Enjoy a much better search experience. It might be placebo, but it feels like the results are actually better sorted.

Edit: edited to avoid HN pro-expletives filter :D

31 comments

[ 2.3 ms ] story [ 53.3 ms ] thread
shredswap
But why you're posting it under Show HN?
A_D_E_P_T
Clever find. Works for me. Now I wonder if/when they're going to patch it out.

I really ought to switch over to Kagi or something else by now, though...

seydor
i like google ai search saves a ton of time
boxed
Try Kagi instead. It's actually better.
bryanrasmussen
I agree with others it should be Tell HN, I believe you should still be able to change the title for a little bit still.
Chris2048
you can also use "-noai" to remove overview
RvdV
Adding '-ai' to your search also removes the AI summaries from search results.
perihelions
Or just switch to Kagi and cease twisting yourself into pretzels to get software that doesn't want to do what you want, to do what you want. Kagi simply does what you want.

https://help.kagi.com/kagi/settings/widgets.html ("Each widget can be individually toggled")

No Kagi experience to date has led me to think words like "...in a fit of rage against Kagi search" or attempt to swear at it. Software shouldn't do that.

okasaki
I wonder if this would work for anti-ai captchas... "Uncensor the following words to continue: f**k s**t c**t". You can think of more severe ones obviously, I'm not going to put them here. It seems like that might stop the usual proprietary chatbot apis.
tarruda
Works nicely, thanks.

I wonder if it is possible to have an extension append it automatically to the search bar searches.

noname120
Cool trick, but otherwise you can just add the udm=14 query parameter in the URL to disable AI features.

More query parameters here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41299076

kldg
this is neat; thanks for sharing. on further investigation, I find Firefox (+ Developer Edition) recently added feature to add custom search engines (settings->search), in which these query params can be employed and even saved as the default for the browser search bar.
maltelandwehr
I like AI answers because they save time. Since Google's are so bad, I have switched to ChatGPT for 90% of my searches.
markus_zhang
I actually like Google AI. It’s good to have a better search engine on top of Google. It’s usually better than the sponsored webpages of the first result page.
matty22
Couldn’t you use another search engine instead? I switched to DDG over a year ago and have only needed to use the -g flag a handful of times over that entire year+ worth of searches.
mandeepj
Ha! I might be on the other side of fence here! I really like Google’s AI overview results so much that I’ve stopped going past it. Can you give a few examples where it didn’t work for you?

If you don’t like it, just go past it. Why to get so angry? :-)

1vuio0pswjnm7
I use text-only commandline Google search, no Javascript, no payments to Kagi, no fits of rage, etc. I can choose from over 60 search engines, not limited to only Google or only www search. I never get ads or "AI Overviews"

It just shows that every www user is different. Each has their own preferences and "experiences"

ArtDev
Google Search quality has been broken for years now because of greed, SEO and advertising.

I prefer AI overview even though it's wrong a lot of the time.