5 mo. ago • 96%

Does One Line Fix Google? - A “Web” filter that presents what Google used to look like a decade ago | tedium.co

tedium.co How I Made Google’s “Web” View My Default Search

Forget AI. Google just created a version of its search engine free of the extra junk it has added over the past decade-plus. You just need one URL parameter.

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/

Hacker News @lemmy.smeargle.fans How I Made Google's "Web" View My Default Search

53 comments

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

93
- 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.
  
  30
- 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.
  
  23
  
  You get ads?
  
  10
  
  Schrödingers Polak
  
  9
  
  Schroedinger's polecat
  
  2
- Seems like an ordinary experience with Google. They love assuming what users want instead of letting them have options.
  
  13
  
  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.
  
  9
  
  They learned this from Microsoft.
  
  2
- Open google.com/ncr once. It sets your preference to no-country-redirect.
  
  6
  
  I'm not going to lie to you, I'm never using google unless I'm forced to
  
  5
  
  probably requires you to keep its cookies
  
  1
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

67
- 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.
  
  27
  
  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
  
  10
- 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.
  
  17
- Google Search had ONE JOB and that is to show web links.
  
  7
- 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.
  
  1
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.

61
- 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?
  
  28
  
  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.
  
  9
- Agree. There's nothing we can do to bring back the ability to look up harm reduction information for drug users, for example.
  
  13
  
  Is this an area where the quality of results particularly degraded ?
  
  5
  
  Erowid is the OG resource for that
  
  1
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.

43
- Important addition: You'll have to set browser.urlbar.update2.engineAliasRefresh to true in 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.
  
  17
- 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 ;)
  
  7
The best way to fix Google is to not use it

27
- 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.
  
  7
  
  Kagi is good. I'm using the unlimited search tier. It's so nice not to have all the cruft in my searches.
  
  8
Is there a way to add the udm=14 trick to the !g bang on DDG?

27
- 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.
  
  8
  
  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:
  
  https://www.google.com/search?udm=14&q=%s
  
  3
  
  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.
  
  1
- Ecosia uses #g
  
  -10
  
  ... How does that relate to the question asked?
  
  15
Never thought I would see the day where Google crumbles, but they're actively sprinting towards it now.

23
Why tho? Why use google?

7
It doesn't. But it makes the results more bearable and less filled with trash.

3
Permanently Deleted

-2
- 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.
  
  13
  
  Permanently Deleted
  
  1
Why do y'all hate AI so much? I'm using Google for search every day and it's still working well.

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