Search for almost anything on Google and an AI-generated answer now appears before the actual results. If you'd rather see the classic list of links — because you want sources, not summaries — here's the honest situation: Google does not provide a setting that permanently disables AI Overviews. But several methods remove them from your searches, ranging from a one-tap filter to a set-and-forget browser change.
Method 1: Click the “Web” filter (quickest)
After any search, look at the filter tabs under the search box — All, Images, News, Videos. Click More and choose Web. You get pure, old-fashioned web results: no AI Overview, no answer boxes, just links. The limitation: it applies to that one search, so you're clicking it constantly.
Method 2: The udm=14 trick
That Web filter has a URL parameter: udm=14. Any Google search URL that includes it skips straight to link-only results:
https://www.google.com/search?q=your+search&udm=14
You can bookmark https://www.google.com/search?udm=14&q=%s as a custom search shortcut, or just remember the parameter. This is the mechanism every “turn off Google AI” browser extension uses under the hood.
Method 3: Make it your browser's default search (set and forget)
The permanent fix is telling your browser to use the Web-filtered URL for every search from the address bar:
- Chrome / Edge: Settings -> Search engine -> Manage search engines -> Add. Name it anything (e.g. “Google Web”), and set the URL to
https://www.google.com/search?udm=14&q=%s. Then click the three dots next to it and choose Make default. - Firefox: Add a bookmark with the same URL and give it a keyword, or install a search shortcut that points at it, then set it as your default in Settings -> Search.
Every address-bar search now returns classic results. You can still click back to the “All” tab any time you actually want the AI answer.
Method 4: Reduce them with search operators
AI Overviews appear less often on searches Google treats as precise: quoted phrases ("exact phrase"), site: queries, and minus-operator exclusions. Not a switch, but if you already search like a power user, you'll see far fewer of them.
Why there's no real off switch
AI answers are Google's strategy, not an experiment — which is why every method above works by asking for a different view of results rather than disabling anything. Expect the workarounds to keep working (the Web filter is a documented feature), but don't expect a global toggle to ever ship.
The flip side: your customers see these answers
Here's the part that matters if you run a business: most of your customers will not turn AI Overviews off. When they ask Google — or ChatGPT, or Gemini — for a business like yours, an AI decides who gets named. Making sure that's you is a discipline of its own; it's what our AI SEO services exist to do.
Related: prefer to trim AI from your desktop too? See our guide to turning off Copilot in Windows 11.