I sometimes like to use Google to search for Reddit posts because Reddit's search feature is garbage and usually doesn't work. I searched "golden retrievers reddit" as a way to prove the point, but this happens with any search term. I'm having trouble finding any way to turn this off, or any discussion of this feature anywhere at all (it seems separate from the standard Google AI summaries we all know and hate).

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  • This is absolute garabe

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  • Boycott Google

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  • seriously this is really awful. i’m so upset about this. why does every update make everything worse?

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  • downvoted every "just download duck duck go" comment

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    but what does it do?

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    It gets rid of AI and ads and makes google more like the old google.

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    Wow thank you so much!! An actual solution! I appreciate this so much! Was getting so sick of the "just use DuckDuckGo" comments lmao

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  • God this feature is so terrible. Google search was already awful and limiting searches to Reddit felt like the best way to quickly see what actual humans were saying about a given topic. Of course they’d take that away from us…

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  • Use DuckDuckGo

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  • Don't use google.

    DuckDuckGo gives you control, and allows you to turn off AI everything, even the images

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    I wish people would post answers instead of pasting the same thing in every comment.

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    I switched to it a week ago and had to switch back because the search was genuinely awful.

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  • DuckDuckGo is just dumping AI slop to me too, even with their "AI filter" on, its no difference. About to just daily drive Yandex or something lol.

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    I haven't gotten that. Have you double checked your settings? /gen

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    I'm pretty sure it's reddit's side, not google. Reddit is offering these AI summaries to web cralwers (google, ddg etc.)

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  • Another improvement no one wants.

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    “Improvement”

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  • Why are you still using Google In 2025?

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    What is a good search engine you recommend? I seem to get the best results on Google for pdf’s of activities for my clients. But otherwise I use Ecosia.

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    I'm a basic bitch, I use good ol duckduckgo. But it wouldn't hurt to try others' suggestions too. You'd probably get some good suggestions in this sub

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    Not OP but I love Startpage, it uses Google results but has no AI and less sponsored hits.

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  • On the other hand I hate how google shows you some dumb snippet that doesn’t even have the words searched for and then you click the link and sometimes it’s a huge ass page. It could just skip right to the most relevant section (ithink it used to) but it starts at the top and often if I don’t care enough I just say fuck it and move on. If it worked it would be nice but I’m not holding my breath.

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    Nah they're getting bad too with AI results.

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    I use DuckDuckGo but their results are unfortunately not as good as Google's, in my experience. Are there are other search engines that have more relevant results?

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  • this shit is honestly making me suicidal smh lmao

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    Live without the internet or social media for a week. It’s amazing.

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  • Try using startpage.com instead. Same results as Google, but no tracking and AI garbage.

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  • Switch from Google to Kagi. You’re welcome.

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    Paying for a search engine? Are you kidding me??

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    Not only that, but the results are identical to Google's, it uses its crawlers

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    [deleted]

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    That isn't selling me on it at all..

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    You can pay a small amount for an ad-free, customizable search engine that works, or you can use the alternatives which have increasingly useless search results mixed with paid advertising, AI slop, and the harvesting of your personal data.

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    People always cave and pay for convenience just cause it's the easier route. There are many ways to mitigate AI related results. You can switch to one of the many alternate search engines. They're not perfect, but they're good enough for the average consumer. Or you could just learn to search more efficiently to exclude AI related results.

    As for personal data, if you're on the internet, then your personal data is not personal. That's just a fact.

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    L take.

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    Case and point lmao

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    People always cave and pay for convenience just cause it's the easier route

    Some people know the price of everything and the value or nothing.

    You can switch to one of the many alternate search engines

    All of which suck to varying degrees, and most if not all include unwanted ads and AI slop.

    Or you could just learn to search more efficiently to exclude AI related results

    I'm all ears on your advanced search parameters that filter out AI slop from Google search.

    if you're on the internet, then your personal data is not personal.

    If by personal you mean private, that is a superficially correct statement that incorrectly asserts that there is no way to limit the amount of personally identifiable data you share online, especially your search history. It suggests you're either ignorant on the subject, or just disingenuous.

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    I'm going to be curt because I refuse to go back and forth over a search engine. You can use the shitty options, or don't.

    You can use tools like this to exclude ai. A simple search provides useful reddit posts from users asking the same thing: https://tenbluelinks.org/ https://udm14.com/

    I don't care about semantics, the statement was as stated and is referring to the average user. Consider me disingenuous if you want.

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    $120 for search functionality seems a lot

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    $10 a month for what is perhaps the most often used utility on the internet, at a time when the leading search engine (Google) has been made intentionally bad in order to prioritize engagement and ad revenue, is one of the best bargains in software services.

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    Google is free and see what they do to keep themselves profitable lol.

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    r/duckduckgo is decent if you don't want to pay. Kagi is great.

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    I tried DDG back before Google became entirely useless. I wasn't thrilled with the results. I get that not everyone can afford to pay, but considering all the other useless crap most people pay for, I think $10/month for a functional and ad-free search service is a great value.

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  • Yea, when you go to type in google in the search bar, type duckduckgo instead

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    That has an AI function now too. Not as "in ya face" as others but still there

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    But you can opt out of AI responses

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    For some reason I have to keep turning it off. And I am not blocking their cookies.

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    Yeah, I’ve noticed it pops back every once in a while too.

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  • Normally I'd suggest DuckDuckGo for this but I'm pretty sure it's on reddit's end this time.

    it's kinda genius in a sad way; make it abysmal to get results from the summaries so that more people visit the site.

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    I assumed it was on Reddit's end (mainly because I expect Google to have a popup to make sure you know they're "helping") until I compared Duckduckgo results and didn't get the AI summaries. I don't know enough about search engine nitty-gritty to know if that confirms anything.

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    I see the summaries sometimes on DDG too, so I wouldn't be surprised if Google just updates more often

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  • Oh that would really wind me up!!

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    It would toss my salad!

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  • This is strange. It looks like thei content is delivered to google by Reddit.

    Which tab of search are you using? "all/general"?

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  • Degooggle your phone, use duckduckgo

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    Switch from Google Maps to Maps.Me .

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  • "We noticed that a lot of people favor reddit for their queries because it's a good source of highly specific, human written, plain language information.

    So we found a way to make it none of these things."

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    The longer you spend searching, the more ads Google can show you. They are incentivized to hide what you really want.

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  • I switched to Qwant recently and it’s great. No Ads, no AI, a very peaceful experience

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    Appreciate the recommendation, gonna look into Qwant

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    I've been using Qwant for awhile now, its been great!

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  • ah cool, replaced the helpful relevant snippet with a meaningless block of text. just what i wanted

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  • There is an option in the settings somewhere to eliminate automatic AI functions.

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  • AI is corrupting the internet like microplastics are the oceans.

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    Don’t forget our brains and balls

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    I never thought of it like that, but you're right, AI is corrupting my brain and balls

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    I was leaning into the microplastics accumulating in our brains and balls

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  • It might feel dumb, but I finally got sick enough of Google search that I switched to Duck Duck Go. It searches fine, and I don't get all the garbage Google used to give me. It's just a normal web search, and I can search Reddit too if I tell it to.

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    Yeah, made the same switch to DDG and most of the time the results are much better than with Google

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    I did one up and moved to SearxNG, it's basically a metasearcher that does the same query to several sites at once (including DDG, Google, Mojeek, and several others you can choose) and makes things as private as possible (attempting to remove the AI junk, for example).

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    I'm thinking about self-hosting SearXNG for similar reasons. Murmurings about needing to log into search engines don't sit well with me.

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    I've been self-hosting SearXNG for about a year now. A bit finicky, especially if somebody catches wind of your personal domain and gets your site rate-limited, but otherwise it's a fresh breath of air when it does work.

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  • Maybe try adding '-ai' to the end of your searches. Adding that removes the main ai summary for your search, maybe it might remove the url summaries too

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  • I can’t even look at information on my medications without every single top link being a drug rehab centre

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    I wanted to know why people addicted to meth crave sweets. Like what is going on chemically and biologically. Still don't know, because all I got was addiction info.

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    It's been like that for years. The worst part is everything on those "drug rehab center" sites is misinformation and mostly copy/pasted with only the drug name changed or AI slop.

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    Yep. Try actually looking for a rehab center. It’s a nightmare with generic “rehabintexas . com” type links with zero info on them. Lord help you if you’re searching for a treatment facility that’s more old school (like a methadone clinic). It’s awful all around.

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  • If you add "trump dementia" to the search it removes AI. I know it removes AI overview, not sure about link summaries.

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    I tried some slurs and got a very angry ai overview about how my search term had nothing to do with said slurs.

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    This is absolutely hilarious.

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    I want to add that I'm not kidding or being intentionally political. This will actually remove AI overview.

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    This post was fact checked by true American patriots

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  • I can't test because it's not doing that for me, but another post or comment I saw said that if you add -ai to your search it'll get rid of the ai that shows up at the top of the page. It might get rid of the ai in the search results too, but no confirmation.

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    I tried this and it didn't work for the Reddit results :(

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    If it’s only Reddit searches, that might be Reddit’s doing. They’re leaning in to AI pretty hard.

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    It’s def on Reddit’s end! At the end of many Reddit posts now (that you searched for on a browser) it has an “ai summary” of the post and I think Reddit is using that on their search results’ descriptions. Huge pain.

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    Bummer. I wonder if those results are created by reddit's AI and cached by google search, or made up on the fly by google. There might be a google search (or google account) setting that can disable that if they're doing it. I looked around in firefox and chrome in google search and account settings and can't find it. But they do roll out different features to different users over time.

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  • + machine-translated Reddit posts in SERPs 🤓 (which makes country-specific search difficult 🤢)

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  • Use DuckDuckGo? 

    Edit: not a sarcastic answer btw - I literally switched to them the second google put the summaries at the top in. DuckDuckGo do offer an ai summary but they ask first, so you can say no thanks ever an it stays turned off. 

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    I tried using that engine and wasnt getting the best results for finding local businesses plus it wasnt giving the best search results.

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    For me, I search local businesses in my map. There are a surprising number of small businesses that don't really have an online presence or leverage SEO's to even appear in searches...so I use maps and read through reviews and then go to a site if they have one.

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    Love hearing this. Let's take the internet back to the early days with duck duck go and ask jeeves!

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    [deleted]

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    Honestly you're better off embracing a little change when the familiar are degrading so quickly in quality.

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    I can vouch that Duck Duck Go's search functionality and comprehensiveness has improved a LOT over the last few years. And google's, which I still use at work, has rapidly gone downhill in that time.

    I can honestly say that DDG is already objectively the better search engine (and browser), even without considering the obvious privacy differences.

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    Lean in to change. It will increase the quality of your life. These services you hang on to are only getting worse. Your need for familiarity is hindering your privacy and workflow.

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    Habit is understandable, but changing browser and search engine requires such minimal effort and adjustment that it's almost non-existent. Why not just try it for a week and see how you go?

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