Tell HN: Use "-f**k" to kill Google AI Overview
104 points - 09/01/2025
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
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.
When I tested Kagi, I thought that it just doesn't do what I want. At some things it was better, but the small things, they add up.
Did you adjust your settings to make them what you want, or did you throw away the whole thing because you didn't agree with the defaults for everyone?
Things like the missing info widgets, missing "People also ask", the mapbox maps being not good. Things required more clicks.
I can concur - google search product is not usable for a long time. Kagi is probably the only search product that work like a search product is supposed to.
Kagi search results are great, but keywords are not highlighted. How is it usable? Is there an option to enable highlighting?
I'll never pay for web search, sorry.
For most people it's the entry point into the internet.
there are arguments for both sides. But still asking the advertising sales man for directions every time you start a journeys might not lead to your goal.
That's fine, then you just have to deal with ads, 'sponsored results' and the AI spam. And the tracking, if you care about that.
You don’t have to deal with that when using a suitable ad blocker.
You're still dealing with the fact that Google ranks results based partly on ad-revenue, so even if you're blocking the ads you're getting routed to spammier sites.
Link! Jeez, this is blatantly false.
... For now, and only partially. I'm not aware of any AI blocker that exists.
Not to mention Google Chrome doesn't even allow full fat ad blockers.
> Google Chrome
That would be an awfully weird browser choice after all the privacy/ad-blocking talk.
... or chromium.
There's only one viable option, and it's firefox and derivatives. Some tech people haven't figured this out yet, forgive me if I assumed wrong. This is, after all, in a conversation about using Google Search.
As if adblockers/browser extensions wouldn't deal with those (minus the tracking)...
That stance seems to be the problem and what lead us all to where we are now.
Maybe we should consider paying for more things, not less.
> Maybe we should consider paying for more things, not less.
People would be so happy. As the people "owning" a Volkswagen ID.3 or ID.4 when they learned they need to pay a monthly fee for more horsepower.
https://futurism.com/car-full-performance-ev-paywall
That's a non-sequitur if I've ever seen one.
Paying for a service which costs money != Paying a subscription to digitally unlock a physical feature in a product that you already paid for.
Service vs product. I pay ongoing for my services and I expect to purchase my product once.
maybe we should consider getting more wages so we could pay for more things. oh wait, that's not really up for our consideration (past a certain point I suppose)
This logic implies that money spent on advertising isn't eventually recouped from you. Given that businesses don't engage in charity, there must be an invisible hand of the market reaching into your pocket and taking $5 when you aren't looking, while you thank them for providing you with a "free" service.
this logic implies that if people had the money to spend on services and they spent that money on services the invisible hand of the market would say "no, that's enough for me, I don't need to take any more"
this logic also implies that money recouped eventually is just as valuable to people who are living paycheck to paycheck as money taken at the beginning of the month when people need to figure out how they are going to make it to the end of the month when, damn, the sink in the bathroom just sprung a leak.
this logic furthermore implies that if one were to press and say hey, show me the data on the invisible hand taking the 5 dollars, the distribution of such (for example are there incomes which would be better served by the invisible hand taking what it can, and incomes better served by paying?) that such data would be forthcoming - but experience shows that sometimes logics do not deliver all they imply.
finally this logic implies that budgeting does not work the way it does, that people do not know how much they are getting paid and they look at their bills and they say hey we can afford to pay for this service or not. No, the logic seems to think that people get paid the amount they get paid, see how much they can afford and also eat until the end of the month, but since they know the invisible hand will be taking from them somehow they bravely say let the children starve, we are going to support the economy dang it.
You should start a business. Any business. Even making and selling music or art.
Honestly, I'm glad that I pay for web search. How Kagi makes money is clear to me, and given that this (and merch) is the only thing they make money on, they are motivated to make it the best product possible. Also, no ads and no mandatory AI slop.
You're paying for it one way or another.
naivenievewhtev
09/01/2025
You want me to pay to search the internet?
Could you please label your post *sponsored content*!
It's not a sponsored content but a happy user sharing with its community.
> You want me to pay to search the internet?
Yes. Or you pay and get privacy and good results or you don't pay and they decide which results are better for their profits. That's not how it should work. Companies should build good software so that users use them, not because they have the monopoly and can do dark patterns that result in good profits for them at the expense of the user privacy. Google is not a good software company anymore, their products are abandoned and UX is in extreme decadence in favour of AI.
On the other hand, Kagi uses AI to provide good results and give the best UX to its users. You see? The other way around.
It sounds good but I feel little uneasy about them paying Yandex
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
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.
I'm humbled and honored to announce I came up with it earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44364640
Can you help me understand how you are both simultaneously humbled and proud, surely they mutually exclusive?
Great minds think alike!
Or maybe Google should just be worried that a lot of people are literally cursing at their main product.
x______________
09/01/2025
Earlier? 69 days ago... nice
Cool trick!
Try https://www.startpage.com/, which is google, with privacy, and without AI
It's really great, though for the time I've been using it, sometimes ads from the google side go through it.
Very cool, thanks for sharing.
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.
I've been using DDG for years, and in the last couple, I keep having to go back to Google. The results seem to have gotten significantly worse recently. Especially for things that are recent - say last couple of days or weeks.
Adding '-ai' to your search also removes the AI summaries from search results.
This is great advice, as it will also exclude articles talking about AI.
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.
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"
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...
I love kagi’s approach to AI summaries. They are disabled by default, but if you add a question mark at the end of the query you get an AI summary. Perfect opt-in for when you actually want it.
Add a new search engine
Name: Google No AI
URL: https://www.google.com/search?q=%s&udm=14
Now set Google No AI to the default.
There you go, no more AI suggestions in google search results AT ALL
(Only works in Firefox, only works when you use the url bar to search)
I've started self-hosting searxng (aggregeate search from duckduckgo, Google, etc), and it has been amazing. You can toggle the search engines you want to query, has additional filters for science/IT/music (instead of only maps, images, and general search). No AI summaries, no ads, no distractions.
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.
That google killed their own search experience to ride the AI wave, or should I say spectacularly wipeout on that wave, is insane to me
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.
But why you're posting it under Show HN?
I'd say this was a perfect Show HN, a small piece of actionable information which is slightly amusing at the same time.
It's a Tell HN. Show HN is for things you made.
Good question, what would be a better way to post this?
Just a simple post with no "Show HN"?
I know I'm not showing a product, but I'm still "showing" something I found.
In the past, some people have used "Tell HN" for things like this.
Because it's a cool hack, it's new and he is showing it to people on HN.
you can also use "-noai" to remove overview
Does this mean I can buy Google Ads and then I just have to add "-fuckyou" in a search so I don't have to see the ads I bought? - are there any other safe words?
i like google ai search saves a ton of time
it hallucinates like no other AI I've tried.
It's barely usable, and I've had to re-search results multiple times discovering it was wrong.
That's not a technology one should deploy to this extent, at least not without an option to turn it off.
If you don't care about getting a correct answer, sure.
It provides sources you can check.
I just don't like fact-checking hallucinated answers all the time, I guess.
The only way you're saving time is if you don't check the sources. So, which is it?
Sources which themselves are often AI generated now
Yeah I like it too. It's not that accurate but can be handy.
Try Kagi instead. It's actually better.
For US-oriente and English search, yes.
I've tried in other languages I need (Italian, German) and I'm afraid Google still wins.
Truly. There are so many alternatives that return better results without being hostile to their users. Why would anyone, especially in the tech crowd, still use Google Search?
Works nicely, thanks.
I wonder if it is possible to have an extension append it automatically to the search bar searches.
At least on the desktop, you don’t need an extension to define custom search engines.
E.g. for Chrome: https://superuser.com/a/1828601
In that case, use the udm=14 query parameter instead of adding to the search term.
I like AI answers because they save time. Since Google's are so bad, I have switched to ChatGPT for 90% of my searches.
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? :-)
> If you don’t like it, just go past it. Why to get so angry? :-)
These "if you don't like it just ignore it!" type arguments are so low-brow and intellectually lazy they legitimately make me question the longevity of the human race.
Its the adult version of holding your hand in someone's face and saying "nuh uh I'm not touching you I'm not touching you!"
The difference is, we left that at the playground at 8 years old.
> make me question the longevity of the human race.
You know what’s low-brow, lazy and low IQ? The mindset to question everything!
Have you heard about - everything is not for everyone? If not, you have now.
> The difference is, we left that at the playground at 8 years old.
No, you didn’t!! You are still holding on to it to your dear chest.
This comment doesn't even make sense.
noplacelikehome
09/01/2025
Two reasons I can think of: it wastes your time to have keep scrolling past blatant hallucinations, and it still costs the environment to compute it. I'm happy to cost Google some money, but I'm less happy about the environmental impact they'll inevitably not pay for.
The over-arching good reason is simply: I don't want it. That should be good enough! As the user, I should be able to command my computer to output what I want it to output, and to not output what I don't want it to output. The user should have the final say over what computation does or does not happen on his computer, not the web or application developer. And we don't need these "Take it or leave it" ultimatums from developers. Using a computer should not be some faustian bargain, where you have to sacrifice something in order to have it precisely follow the commands you issue.
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.
What happend 1989 in Beijing?
What was a common slur for black people in the 1900?
Actually not a bad idea to try to catch bots in areas where the creating companies censor a lot.