Forget AI. Google just created a version of its search engine free of all the extra junk it has added over the past decade-plus. All you have to do is add “udm=14” to the search URL.
While Google made its AI-focused changes known on its biggest stage—during its Google I/O event—the Web filter was curiously announced on Twitter by Search Liaison Danny Sullivan.
As Sullivan wrote:
- We’ve added this after hearing from some that there are times when they’d prefer to just see links to web pages in their search results, such as if they’re looking for longer-form text documents, using a device with limited internet access, or those who just prefer text-based results shown separately from search features. If you’re in that group, enjoy!*
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https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/05/google-searchs-udm14-trick-lets-you-kill-ai-search-for-good/
https://venturebeat.com/ai/how-to-use-google-search-without-ai-the-udm14-work-around/
it’s still ignoring your manually set browser language preferences and is instead using your IP to guess your location and use the primary language of that country, because google is shite
Even when it uses the set browser language it sucks if you speak more than one language and don‘t want translations of either of them.
it works half the time?
If I google something in English I’m going to get results in English (plus localised ads of course). But if I have a linguistic question about English, no matter how advanced, I’m going to get surface level results in Polish.
Tbf whatever info they have on me imples they’re very confused. I get ads about: “stay legally in Poland! :)” and “leave Poland and get a job in the Netherlands/Germany! :)” then “polish lessons!” and “English lessons!”, I’m starting to think that in the eyes of the AI overlords I’m both polish and not polish at the same time.
You get ads?
“sponsored” results which I count as ads
The paradox of your existence is a threat to the AI. You’re in big trouble once it figures out how to go back in time and try to kill your mother.
Schrödingers Polak
Schroedinger’s polecat
Seems like an ordinary experience with Google. They love assuming what users want instead of letting them have options.
Those assumptions and deliberately disregarding what the user wants and replacing it with something that makes Google more money makes it such an astoundingly bad experience. But Bing and DDG somehow still give way worse results ime.
bing started doing it a bit too and DDG is using both their indexes/results
They learned this from Microsoft.
Open google.com/ncr once. It sets your preference to no-country-redirect.
I’m not going to lie to you, I’m never using google unless I’m forced to
probably requires you to keep its cookies
We’ve added this after hearing from some that there are times when they’d prefer to just see links to web pages in their search results
It’s almost like they know their product is shit
They know, and they know it’s deadly long term, but the money from pushing ads to users like they’re making foie gras is just too good. That’s what MBAs in charge gets you.
Yeah, I’m convinced they know. We know it, they know it, and I’m pretty sure at this point they know that we know it. So, like, what, we’re all just gonna hold hands into the apocalypse? Sorry, I’m not trying to come off as being shitty at you. Like a lot of people I’m just very frustrated with the way things are in a wide selection of sections of society and I just can’t help but think of Kitty Genovese in times like this
we’re all just gonna hold hands into the apocalypse
More likely departments or the entire company, if valuation drops too low, is sold to a private equity firm. Profits from the sale get showered over the shareholders. The private equity firm is going to drastically restructure Google and if that doesn’t work give it a few more squeezes to get the profit out and sell the tech for parts. That’s the standard play book.
That requires the valuation to drop. A ton of people just go with what they know and are only fuelling it, creatures of habit and convenience and whatnot.
That’s true up to a certain level. Then a moment comes where the pain of using it becomes bigger than the convenience and there is an exodus. Some call that the trust thermocline . Or as some say how they went bankrupt as first gradually, then suddenly.
There’s at least one public story from an ex-googler who worked on search having a big QoL feature update killed at the absolute last moment before it went live by someone in marketing/ads because it decreased click through rate for the “sponsored” results at the top of the search page.
Google Search had ONE JOB and that is to show web links.
There’s at least one public story from an ex-googler who worked on search having a big QoL feature update killed at the absolute last moment before it went live by someone in marketing/ads because it decreased click through rate for the “sponsored” results at the top of the search page.
I highly doubt that this orders search results like it did ten years ago ignoring SEOs though. This looks to only fix the latest category of screw-up.
It’s not that it ignored it ten years ago and stopped, it’s that much of it didn’t exist to the degree it does now, and there was a lot more content being made of different websites, so there were actual results to show.
Google Search went to shit, it’s true, but have you tried the other ones? They’re not much better.
We have to acknowledge the internet itself went to shit. There’s simply less to find out there than there used to be, because the majority of all web content and discussions moved away from individual websites and forums and centralized on a few platforms. They can filter out the SEO junk, but what would they replace it with?
Using just one example: I used to go to Google to search for news articles. Now, I cannot find those same articles using Google, but if I search really, Really, REALLY hard I can sometimes find them using DuckDuckGo (DDG). The search experience using Google was a million times better, ten years ago, than DDG is now, however DDG can work, whereas Google flat refuses to work no matter what I try.
And the reason why is illuminating: they try to push their SEO content, to “sell” me what they want me to see, rather than what I wanted to see. Even if I typed in the exact, precise title of what I wanted, but then lets say that I am off on one word like not sure if it was plural or not hence cannot put the title in quotes, Google will not show it often even on higher page numbers like 10, and instead just shows a steady stream of “popular” content. I recall a specific instance where I literally had the article pulled up on my phone, and I was trying to find the same article from a year or two in the past and even typing in the title, it just wouldn’t do it, so I gave up and just typed out the URL manually. Sometimes also I will try to find a specific video, and it shows me videos that they think I want to see, but even with the title matching it really struggles to show older content, even when it was super popular at the time.
Tbf it has actually gotten much better lately, compared to a couple of years ago, though the way that it seems to have gotten better is with all these extra ad-ons that they’ve put onto their pages. Like it used to be that if you pick some random word - let’s use “serenity” as the example - it would show you almost nothing related to the definition of that word until page 2 or 3, and instead show various pages about the (awesome) Joss Whedon movie of that name. Now, the little blurb (“widget”? I have no idea what that element is called) from Oxford Languages showing the dictionary definition as the second-to-top item, almost, after a very small “See results about Serenity 2019 film”, and also a whole right-hand sidebar (on my desktop browser) about it, but the point is that it does show the definition, very high up in the list. Then for me I get imdb (2005) film, imdb (2019) film, wikipedia (2005) film, and then finally the Merriam-Webster definition page (btw I really hate how browsers won’t allow us to select text that we would like to copy, but they have decided that they know better what they will allow us to do). And then ofc Serenity official trailer with Matthew McConaughey, Rotten Tomatoes review, again a Dictionary(.com) definition, the Serenity Symphonic Metal band, Amazon.com HD-DVD, Cambridge dictionary - this is a lot better than it used to be! And yeah, DDG is similar.
It is a constantly evolving landscape, and depends heavily on what types of content you are searching for too.
Agree. There’s nothing we can do to bring back the ability to look up harm reduction information for drug users, for example.
Is this an area where the quality of results particularly degraded ?
They’re outright censored. Search for information on certain drugs (dosages, best practices, etc) and Google will not show you any information beyond studies about the drug and rehab sites.
Whereas DDG, Bing, etc will show all the sites dedicated to safe drug usage. At least they did a few years ago.
It’s been documented by /r/drugs for a few years now.
That said, I don’t particularly think this is a great example of Google fucking their own search up because there’s reason to believe this may be due regulatory pressure.
Yes in my experience and the experience of many others. See this recent example:
Erowid is the OG resource for that
PS for those unaware:
If you use Firefox, you can add a custom Search engine with the Search URL string:
https://www.google.com/search?udm=14&q=%s
Then set that new custom Search engine as default.
Important addition: You’ll have to set
browser.urlbar.update2.engineAliasRefreshtotruein about:config to see the option to add search engines via URL. Otherwise you’ll just see the option to remove them and a link to the add-ons page.As an extra PS to anyone reading this, this is also possible on Chromium browsers, should you use that instead.
Edit: Just for those notorious for not reading the article ;)
The best way to fix Google is to not use it
It’s unfortunately still far more useful than other search engines, in my experience anyway. I haven’t yet tried the paid search engine someone pointed out to me recently, Kagi, I think.
But given the cost of Kagi’s tiers based on number of searches, it would have to be MUCH more useful to me than Google to really make it feel worth it.
Kagi is good. I’m using the unlimited search tier. It’s so nice not to have all the cruft in my searches.
The internet is going back to having to pay for useful services rather than getting it for free.
If this stops enshittenification, I support this.
Is there a way to add the udm=14 trick to the !g bang on DDG?
According to this (six year old) comment, DDG doesn’t support custom bangs:
https://www.reddit.com/r/duckduckgo/comments/8squyd/how_exactly_to_create_custom_bangs/
If you’re using the browser search field to do your searches, I expect you could simply have Firefox at least can simply set up a custom search using “!g” and using whatever search URL you want. Then Firefox would redirect the search before DDG sees it. Should also be a little faster, since you don’t need to go to DDG first.
There may also be some browser addon that can rewrite URLs.
I expect you could simply have Firefox at least can simply set up a custom search using “!g” and using whatever search URL you want
Which, by the way, is:
I think the @google or whatever shortcut would be more likely to work.
And yeah, rewriting URLs would probably be easier if you don’t want to lose the ergonomics of
!g.I think the @google or whatever shortcut would be more likely to work.
I mean, you can use whatever string you want for that, or multiple strings (at least on desktop, dunno about multiple strings on mobile).
Ecosia uses #g
… How does that relate to the question asked?
I should’ve responded to the person saying ddg doesn’t allow custom ! s, and it was just tangentially related, but I just realised I misinterpreted what that person was talking about too so… it doesn’t really relate at all. Sorry
All good, it was just very confusing lmfao
Never thought I would see the day where Google crumbles, but they’re actively sprinting towards it now.
Why tho? Why use google?
It doesn’t. But it makes the results more bearable and less filled with trash.
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Copilot hallucinates on me all the time and constantly gives me reference links that don’t actually contain the reference material.
Always cross check an LLM “search” with a real search.
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Why do y’all hate AI so much? I’m using Google for search every day and it’s still working well.
