Google Search looks very different these days as the brand applies AI to almost every aspect of its business. Although AI Insights doesn’t offer much in the way of tangible information, Google places these summaries at the top of any search query.
Thankfully, there is a solution. Google has a Web filter mode that removes all AI Insights, Knowledge cards, and all the other extraneous features the search giant has added to its results over the past decade. When you search in this Web mode, you basically get ten blue links, and there’s so much difference that I now use this mode by default in Chrome for Android and web.
What is Web Mode in Google Search?
All you need to do is add &udm=14 to the end of the search query to enable Web mode in Google Search. Google introduced this mode a few years ago, and it’s been updated with News, Photos, and more. along with is one of the icons in the Search interface. Now doing this manually for every request would be tedious and for good people Tedium has built a microsite uses the URL parameter by default.
Web mode is limited to links, so you don’t see any of the extra features that Google has built into Search. So, when you search for a hotel or flight, you will only get links to websites related to booking, not the hotel listings provided by Google in the search results. Honestly, it’s refreshing to use Google Search this way, and the best part is that you can set it as the default mode for searching on your phone and desktop.
While udm=14 is a nice URL parameter, there are other parameters you can use in Google Search. This post does a good job of breaking down all the udm settings It’s available in search, but I found Web mode to make the most difference in my use case.
How to Set Web Mode as Default in Google Search
If you don’t want to see any artificial intelligence flaws in your Google Search results, Web mode is an obvious choice. If you’re using Chrome on Windows/macOS, it’s pretty simple to switch to Web filter mode and ensure that the &udm=14 tag is added to all your search queries. How to do it:
- Paste this into your address bar: chrome://settings/searchEngines
- click on it Add button next to it Site Search.
- Add these details to the dialog box:
- name: Google Web mode
- Shortcut: @web
- URL with %s in place of request: {google:baseURL}search?q=%s&udm=14
- You will now see Google Web Mode as a search engine. go away menu (three vertical dots on the right) and select Default.
- Google now defaults to Web mode when using Google Search.
You can do the same on Android and iOS, and here’s how to enable Web mode when using Chrome for Android:
- go away TenBlueLinks.org
- You will need it now open a new tab and use it Google Search. The query itself can be anything.
- Go through the list of search results menu (the three vertical dots are in the upper right).
- go away Parameters.
- In Search engineyou should see now Google Web mentioned below.
- choose to do Google Web Filter default search engine mode.
The TenBlueLinks site basically contains XML that instructs Google Search to add the &udm=14 filter to all search queries; Your search results will not appear on the site and will not play any additional role in your use of the search engine.
While it’s good to use a web filter, there’s no denying that the quality of Google Search has declined significantly over the past decade. This is immediately apparent when you don’t have all the fluff Google has added to Search in recent years and just look at the list of links. Even then, I found the Web filter to be objectively better than the AI-fueled mess that plain Google Search has become.
