How To Clean Up Your Google Search Results
I use a few different methods to keep my search results clean and usable, and mostly clear of ads and AI clutter. In this Quick Tip, I'll show you what I'm doing.
With AdGuard, a popular ad blocker, you can tell it to block search ads and websites' self-promotion that can also appear in Google search results.
I also enable "Phishing and malware protection", which "detects potentially malicious and phishing sites by checking them against an online database".
I also turn on "activate the most appropriate filter automatically".
Hide Google AI Overviews is a Firefox extension. It will hide the AI summaries that often appear at the top of search results.
Per the extension author: "This browser extension is designed to enhance your browsing experience by removing AI-generated overviews from Google search results. Recognizing that not all users appreciate the AI-powered summaries and insights which can clutter search results, this extension offers a clean, streamlined interface that focuses solely on traditional results, allowing you to easily turn off AI Overviews."
I use Startpage.com as my home page. They pay Google for access to their search, then strip away most ads and other clutter.
I recommend going into settings to customize options, but I love using Startpage! It's free, which is why you'll see some ads, but nothing in comparison to default Google search these days.
UDM14.com ads as special set of characters to the Google search website address (URL), which tells Google to strip out the ads and AI clutter. Who knows how long Google will allow this to work, but for now it's very useful.
As their website states: "If you want to give people easy access to an AI-free Google search, send them to this page."
These are the tricks I use to de-clutter Google search, because there still isn't anything better out there for what search traditionally does.
AI-powered dedicated search engines like Perplexity.ai are making a strong impression, but in my view do not replace Google Search. Just like we might go to ChatGPT for certain things, or NotebookLM and supply it with specific content to work with, Perplexity has it's uses, but all of this AI stuff is early days.
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