How to Hide Google AI Overviews From Your Search Results

AI-generated summaries are popping up at the top of your Google searches, whether you asked for them or not. No longer an opt-in Google Labs experimental feature, these brief snippets pull together answers from across the web to answer questions that would otherwise require several searches. Still, not everyone is a fan. They’re often blatantly wrong, and require obscene amounts of resources, including potable drinking water. While they can be an excellent jump-off point into research, they can also be incredibly annoying.

Dodging Google’s AI Overviews isn’t as simple as clicking a button, but there are a few tricks that can help. For those carrying a torch for the good ol’ days of classic blue links, here’s how to do it.

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First, What Are AI Overviews?

AI Overviews are AI-generated summaries that appear at the top of the Google search result page in response to a query. These above-the-fold text boxes appear in “position zero,” preceding sponsored ads, the People Also Ask box and regular organic results, and display by default (unless otherwise disabled). 

Powered by Google’s Gemini large language model, AI Overviews are designed to provide a synthesized response to complex or multi-part queries that might otherwise require several searches. They formulate answers by drawing on patterns learned during training, pulling together key points and then supporting that information with links from Google’s organic search index — websites the system has crawled, rendered and ranked — so users can verify the sources themselves.

Introduced widely in 2024, AI Overviews now appear in more than 55 percent of all Google searches. This feature alone reflects Google’s shift toward embedding generative AI directly into the search experience at large.

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How To Turn Off Google AI Overviews

1. Include “-AI” at the End of Your Search

Perhaps the quickest workaround is adding “-AI” to the end of every search query. The minus sign functions as a negative search operator, which tells Google to exclude results related to whatever specific term follows. 

Although this method might require more consistent, manual intervention, it more often than not will prevent the AI Overview from triggering, as the minus modifier disrupts the signals Google sets off to generate these automated summaries. It isn’t foolproof, but it’s one of the fastest ways to bypass the overview without changing any browser settings.

How to do it:

1. Type your search query as you normally would.
2. Add a space followed by “-AI” at the end of the query (for example: “How to tie a tie -AI”) and press enter to run the search.

2. Use the “Web” Tab Filter

This is Google’s official method for users looking to skirt around its AI-generated summaries. If you look just below the search bar after inputting an initial query, there is a “web” option (that might be hidden under “more”) along the filter menu next to other filters like “images,” “shopping,” “videos” and “news.” Selecting the “web” tab restores the results page to its classic look. 

How to do it:

1. Run a search as usual.
2. Look at the menu near the top of the results page (All, Images, Forums, Shopping, Videos, News, Tools).
3. Click “web.”
4. If you don’t see it, open the “more” or three-dot menu to find it.

3. Enable a Browser Extension

Another option is to install a browser extension that automatically hides the AI Overview box before it appears on the results page. These add-ons work by applying small pieces of code — usually CSS rules or page filters — that target the specific HTML container connected to Google’s AI Overviews. They detect that page element, then remove it from displaying before the page fully renders. So, although the extension doesn’t change how Google generates search results, it does prevent the AI module from appearing in your browser while keeping the ads, People Also Ask and standard organic links sections intact.

Here are some of the top browser extensions used to hide AI Overviews in Google:

• Hide Google AI Overviews 
• Bye Bye, Google AI 
• Hide AI Overviews 
• AdGuard
• uBlock Origin with a custom filter rule

How to do it:

1. Open your browser’s extension marketplace, whether that be the Chrome Web Store or the Firefox add-ons library. 
2. Search for extensions designed to hide AI Overviews.
3. Once you find one, click on it and select “Add to Chrome” or “Add to Firefox,” then confirm the installation when your browser prompts you.
4. Once installed, the extension will automatically apply its filters to Google search pages. To be sure, you can click on the icon located at the end of your browser search bar and select “manage extension” to verify that it’s activated. Remember to pin it for easy access. 
5. By the time you refresh an existing search results page or run a new search, the AI Overview box should no longer be there. 

4. Add Custom Filter to Your AdBlocker

If you don’t want to add another badge to your extension collection and already use a content blocker like uBlock Origin, you can work within the ad blocker’s settings to manually add a filter that shuts off the page element responsible for displaying the AI summary. Like the specialized extensions listed in the previous method, this approach prevents the overview box from rendering before the page loads without touching the rest of the search results.

One note about this method: Google occasionally changes the class names used for its page elements. In the event that AI Overviews reappear, you may need to update the filter or use uBlock Origin’s element picker tool to select the overview box and generate a new rule automatically.

How to do it:

1. Click the uBlock Origin icon in your browser’s toolbar. It looks like a dark-red shield. 
2. In the small menu that opens, navigate to the settings page by clicking the small gear icon in the bottom right corner.
3. Find the “Custom filters” tab, which lets you add custom blocking rules, and hit the drop-down arrows to the left of “import/export.”
4. Paste the following line into the text box:google.com##.hdzaWe
5. Click “Add” to save and activate the rule.
6. Refresh your Google search results page to see that AI Overviews have been deactivated.

5. The “udm=14” URL Hack

Another workaround involves using a hidden search parameter that forces Google to load results in a simplified “web-only” mode. When this parameter is added to a search URL, the results page skips many of Google’s interface modules — including AI Overviews, shopping blocks and People Also Ask panels — and instead returns to the familiar list of blue links. 

Unlike the “Web” tab filter approach, this method changes the default search configuration in your browser, so the simplified results load automatically every time you run a Google search. In other words, once it’s set up, you don’t need to adjust any settings each time you start a research session. It’s considered one of the more permanent and reliable methods of the bunch. 

How to do it:

1. Open your browser’s “Settings.”
2. Navigate to “Search Engine,” then “Manage search engines and site search.”
3. Click “Add” and enter:
   • Name: Google (Web)
   • Shortcut: @web
   • URL: {google:baseURL}search?q=%s&udm=14
4. Save it, then click the three dots next to your new “Google (Web)” entry and select “Make default.”

6. Switch to Alternative Search Engines

Sometimes it’s easy to forget that Google isn’t the only search engine option. But if you don’t want to deal with AI Overviews anymore, it might be easiest to simply switch to something else. 

Many search engines have added AI but, unlike Google, they usually provide a clear “Off” toggle in their settings menu. Privacy-first crawlers like DuckDuckGo and Brave Search block trackers and either limit or totally abolish data collection practices, while Kagi uses a paid-prescription model to operate without ads and de-incentivize data collection altogether. Startpage is a middleman that pays Google to use its search results but removes all the fluff, which means there are no AI overviews to even disable. Another option that avoids AI entirely, Mojeek, is a link-based search engine that built its own index from scratch. 

How to do it:

1. Open your browser’s “Settings” menu and go to “Search Engine.”
2. Locate the default search engine option.
3. Select a pre-loaded option under the “Change” menu, or go to “Manage search engines and site search” to add your own. 
4. Save your settings by hitting “Set as default.”
5. Type a query into the address bar to troubleshoot.
6. If your platform-of-choice features AI overviews, locate the hamburger or gear icon and find its AI features settings to toggle them “off,” and, if prompted about frequency, toggle to “never.”

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Why Would You Want To Turn AI Overviews Off?

If you aren’t of the ilk that view Google overviews as quick, helpful insights, then you might be of the camp that can’t stand them. They can interrupt usual browsing, and steal your attention away from credible, peer-reviewed sources. As a generative AI product, they might also include factual inaccuracies or skip crucial details, leaving you more confused than informed. Here are some reasons users are turning them off.

They Often Have Inaccuracies

Impressive as it may be, generative AI is prone to hallucinations. Early examples became internet memes for suggesting users glue cheese onto pizza to keep it from sliding off, or recommending to eat one small rock a day to stay healthy. In a Mashable test, Google’s AI Overviews (inaccurately) snitched on itself: When asked about the accuracy rate of its summaries, it responded saying that it’s wrong 60 percent of the time. While that specific figure was a misunderstanding of a separate study, the trial speaks to a poetic irony. In other tests, Google’s AI Overviews failed to know dates to current events, like upcoming NASA launches, and even got basic details like the year wrong, while its separate feature, Google’s “AI Mode” filter, got them right. 

Google even admitted in a blog post that these summaries are only about as reliable as their old “featured snippets” — a feature with a history of promoting everything from medical misinformation to bizarre conspiracy theories.

They Are Resource Intensive

Even when accurate, AI Overviews come are quite costly from a resource perspective. Google’s company line is that the median Gemini search uses 0.24 watt-hours of electricity, which is about the same as running a microwave for one second. The company also estimates that each query drinks up about five drops of water and outputs 0.03 grams of carbon dioxide. While these numbers seem small individually, consider the fact that Google processes 16 billion daily queries. They add up at a shocking rate compared to original search methods, which use roughly 0.03 watt-hours of electricity — about 10 times less than a Gemini-powered AI Overview — and less than a single drop of cooling water per search.

The Have Brought on a “Traffic Apocalypse”

AI Overviews have completely disrupted (or destroyed, depending on who you talk to) how people interact with search results. As found in a 2025 Pew Research study, users are half as likely to click on organic links when an AI Overview is present, indicating an end of an era for traditional SEO. 

For publishers, this has led to a devastating “traffic apocalypse,” brought on by these summaries that have siphoned information from published work only to effectively curtail their audience. Globally, this is looking like a 20 percent year-over-year decrease in click-through traffic, with up to 60 percent of searches rendering no engagement — as the user is fully dissatisfied with the AI Google overview — whatsoever.

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Frequently Asked Questions