Sometimes I see people frustration-post screenshots of Google searches marred by Gemini AI banners.
And that sucks! I'm sorry. But I have to ask: If Google frustrates you… maybe switch away? There *are* no-AI alternatives!:
- Kagi is an AI-infected search engine, but they offer a "custom CSS" feature (see next post) you can use to remove the AI.
And *this* is the time to get out. Before Google takes the search you're used to away completely: https://aftermath.site/google-search-ai-changes/
My steps to configure Kagi as a genAI-free search engine:
In settings
- Disable General->"Keyboard Shortcuts"
- Click Appearance->"Custom CSS" and paste in the text from https://codeberg.org/zerodogg/kagi-no-ai/src/branch/main/kagi-no-ai.css
- Disable Search->AI->"Auto Quick Answer"
What's nice about this is it's bound to your account, so it "works everywhere". You don't have to use a particular browser, you don't have to set up plugins on all your machines.
I've been using Kagi this way for about a year—results seem just as good as Google
Does this get rid of the AI interpretation of your search query and force a search on your actual search terms?
Because No AI duck duck go is garbage in this way. It avoids posting stupid AI summaries, but it still reinterprets whatever you type into the search box, and runs a search based on what it thinks you are looking for, rather than what you actually asked for
I use it more often than anything else, but that doesn't mean it isn't complete crap. Everything else is just even worse right now
Lycos is the only search engine I know that actually searches on what you type in. But it's clearly deprioritized by its owning company, and is down about 50% of the time
The whole search industry is now back to where it was at before Teoma -- and then Google which stole its logo and concept
Everything on the market is garbage, and whoever can produce something that actually works will win all the customers
@NilaJones when i want kagi to find exact matches and not synonyms i put quotation marks around the words, such as turning
rust curses library
into
"rust" "curses" "library"
I would have preferred functionality like old google where if it decides to deliver an approximate search it tells you and asks if you want to search exactly. But I'm told google doesn't work like that anymore anyway.
I did not see that, no! Thanks very much. Now if only it could be the default...
mcc
NilaJones