How to avoid AI Overviews in Google's search results?
Google's AI Overviews, a feature that generates automated responses to certain search queries, has been a significant change in the user experience. However, it has also caused inconvenience for some users by pushing the list of links, further down the page. This issue is expected to escalate once Google starts incorporating ads into this feature. Despite no option to disable this feature from Google, there are ways to bypass it.
Bypassing AI overviews through browser configuration
One effective way to avoid AI Overviews is by altering your browser's default search engine settings. The website tenbluelinks provides steps on how to do this for various platforms including Chrome on Android, iOS, Windows, and Mac, as well as Firefox on Mac and Windows. In Chrome on Windows and Mac, users can navigate to Settings > Search engine > Manage search engines, and site search to make the necessary changes.
Additional methods to avoid AI Overviews
Other methods to bypass AI Overviews include using uBlock Origin or the Bye Bye, Google AI Chrome extension created by Tom's Hardware's Avram Piltch. This extension utilizes CSS to hide AI Overviews by default, and also offers customization options to remove other elements like Google's discussions section, sponsored links, shopping blocks, and more. For occasional avoidance of overviews, users can conduct their search and then select More > Web for a list of sites without AI Overviews.
Concerns over accuracy of Google's AI capabilities
These workarounds come amid growing concerns over the accuracy of Google's new artificial intelligence capabilities. The company recently revealed its biggest change to search in years with new technology, which has since generated numerous untruths and errors, including recommending glue as part of a pizza recipe, and suggesting the ingestion of rocks for nutrients. These incorrect answers have undermined trust in a search engine that over two billion people rely on for authoritative information.
Google's response to AI Overview concerns
Google Spokesperson Lara Levin stated that the vast majority of AI Overview queries resulted in "high-quality information, with links to dig deeper on the web." She added that many problematic examples were either uncommon queries or ones they couldn't reproduce. The company plans to use these "isolated examples" of problematic answers to refine its database, ensuring users continue to receive accurate and reliable search results.
