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 S...
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
Comments
By perihelions 2025-09-019:467 reply 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.
By al_borland 2025-09-0115:092 reply 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?
By qwertox 2025-09-0115:45 Things like the missing info widgets, missing "People also ask", the mapbox maps being not good. Things required more clicks.
By margarina72 2025-09-019:59 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.
By monort 2025-09-0111:36 Kagi search results are great, but keywords are not highlighted. How is it usable? Is there an option to enable highlighting?
By baal80spam 2025-09-019:496 reply I'll never pay for web search, sorry.
By notrealyme123 2025-09-019:57 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.
By SEOCurmudgeon 2025-09-0215:17 Link! Jeez, this is blatantly false.
By const_cast 2025-09-0117:021 reply ... 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.
By therealpygon 2025-09-0117:451 reply > Google Chrome
That would be an awfully weird browser choice after all the privacy/ad-blocking talk.
By const_cast 2025-09-0118:04 ... 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.
By Milpotel 2025-09-0110:07 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.
By dns_snek 2025-09-0113:37 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.
By jjice 2025-09-0313:39 Service vs product. I pay ongoing for my services and I expect to purchase my product once.
By bryanrasmussen 2025-09-0111:061 reply 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.
By bryanrasmussen 2025-09-0116:17 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.
By ljlolel 2025-09-019:56 You should start a business. Any business. Even making and selling music or art.
By nunez 2025-09-0113:14 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.
By dmurko 2025-09-019:58 You're paying for it one way or another.
By naivenievewhtev 2025-09-0115:321 reply You want me to pay to search the internet?
Could you please label your post *sponsored content*!
By jopicornell 2025-09-0122:25 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.
By 9029 2025-09-023:44 It sounds good but I feel little uneasy about them paying Yandex
By TiredOfLife 2025-09-0110:48 [flagged]
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
By chrislim 2025-09-0218:52 Plug: a dinky little extension that turns utm=14 on/off with a simple toggle. Couldn't find one that worked reliably, so I made one myself and released it for free:
https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/gemi-no-disable-ai-...
By kldg 2025-09-0211:55 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.
By neuroticnews25 2025-09-019:533 reply I'm humbled and honored to announce I came up with it earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44364640
By Daviey 2025-09-0110:48 Can you help me understand how you are both simultaneously humbled and proud, surely they mutually exclusive?
By camillomiller 2025-09-0111:04 Great minds think alike! Or maybe Google should just be worried that a lot of people are literally cursing at their main product.
By x______________ 2025-09-0115:18 Earlier? 69 days ago... nice
Cool trick!
