Ask Uncle Google
Using Almost Everyone's Default Search Engine for Research That Actually Gets You Somewhere
This is the sixth in the series Get Your Facts Straight: Research Skills for Writers. For more about this 18-part series, including the complete schedule and links to the other articles in the series, click here.
It isn’t your imagination: Google searching has become less useful. It is a textbook example of the process Cory Doctorow has named “enshittification,” the progressive deterioration of a platform as it degrades its own functions in the name of pandering to profit-making.
Those of us who are old enough to remember when the first things one saw upon performing a Google search were the actual results of that search have watched with consternation, frustration, and (for me at least) increasing rage as that situation has changed. Now, any random Google search gives you an unasked-for AI
”overview” as its first putative search result, right at the top of the page, and follows it with sponsored links, eventually condescending to give some actual search results mixed into a slurry of links to videos, forum discussions, news and “news” stories, Google’s AI-generated “shopping blocks” of links to buyable items, and eleventyseven other kinds of crap that take time to sort through and are never the actual thing you wanted.
It is clear that Google sees you and me, the people on the user end of its interfaces, as little more than wallets that have acquired the ability to type, and has reimagined its own role as that of a large vacuum cleaner that sucks the money out of all those typing wallets and funnels it into the vaults owned by Google and its nearest and dearest corporate cronies. Our need for actual information, and a way to negotiate the unstinting overflow of data that is the Internet, are at this point mostly of importance to Google insofar as they can be manipulated for profit.
Our information needs, however, still exist. What can we do about it?
We can always refuse to use Google. Microsoft’s Bing has its partisans, and there are others such as Yahoo and DuckDuckGo. You won’t necessarily get better results elsewhere, though some users find that one interface or another has advantages vis-a-vis their specific needs. Statistics suggest that Google has consistently handled more than 80% of all internet search traffic for the last decade, in any case, so it’s a fairly safe bet that for most people, Google is going to be their default search engine: this is why I’ve focused on Google here.
We users can’t fix Google searching from the business end. That’s Google’s code and thus Google’s turf. But there are ways to get more of what you want and need as a researcher (or simply as an asker of questions) and less of what Google does its best to force you to accept:
Exclude the Distract-o-Matics
Learn some search operators
Explore specialized search tools
Exclude the Distract-o-Matics
Google has made it impossible to simply turn off the “AI Overview” feature through the simple expedient of making it a “feature,” and for Google, “features” are something users do not get to opt out of.1
Or at least Google isn’t going to offer anyone a one-click, set-and-forget way to do it. Nor is Google offering anyone easy ways to simply opt out of any of the other main classes of Distract-o-Matics, like sponsored content or “shopping blocks,” that show up in the typical Google search results.
What Google does offer, although few people I’ve talked to about it seemed to realize that it can be used to weed out the AI Overview, is something that’s hidden in plain sight.
After you run a search, you’ll see a set of search limiter tabs in a row below the search term bar. I’ve circled them in pink in this screenshot. You may have used this set of tabs before to search specifically for images or videos, which my conversations suggest might be the best-known uses for this row of search options.
To limit your results to actual text-based web content, all you have to do is click the “Web” option I’ve highlighted in yellow. This omits the AI Overview and, because it limits the results that are shown to text-based web content, dramatically cuts down on the other kinds of intentionally distracting filler a basic, unboundaried Google search spits out.
It is possible to configure your browser to default to this type of search automatically. I haven’t done it, but it can be done and there are step-by-step directions available at Tom’s Hardware, a site I have always found reliable.
I haven’t tried reconfiguring my browser on my own. Instead I’ve chosen to use a browser extension. There are a handful of browser extensions you can download (make sure the one you choose will work on your primary browser) that do a pretty good job of forcing Google searches to work better.
I’m fond of “Bye Bye Google AI” for the Don McLean reference but also for the way in which, at least until Google substantially changes its code and renders the extension useless, it lets you block not only AI Overview but most of Google’s other deliberately introduced enshittifications like sponsored links, “shopping blocks,” and so forth.
Does it solve the problem of crappy search results? No. The quality of the actual results gathered for any given search may still be abysmal. But it does dramatically improve the metaphorical signal to noise ratio of any search, reducing the amount of time and effort you have to spend sifting through it.
Learn some search operators
One of Google’s great strengths as a search engine is that it was designed from its inception for users to simply type in a word or phrase and hit “enter” and have the code do the rest. This essentially eliminated the necessity for a user to already know how to formulate a database search in order to do so, with the result that searching the growing Internet was possible for virtually everyone regardless of their level of tech knowledge.
On the down side, when users don’t know how to construct formal searches using the kinds of operators their search engines are using back there behind the code curtain, users may be more likely to simply accept as best or most significant whatever results they’re given on the principle that “this is what Google found.” Google’s search algorithms thus get anointed as informational authorities, which is both risky and naïve.
Search engines can’t evaluate the validity or relevance of information. They can only present what they find according to the parameters that have been constructed for the search. Google’s simple one-line interface that lets the user just type in a search term or even a whole sentence gives the illusion that it’s a transparent, uncomplicated process. You ask, you receive, you never consider the more than 2 billion lines of code (that was the estimate circa 2015) that are behind it. In fact, you probably have no idea those billions of lines of program even exist, never mind what might be in them.
Relying wholly on what a search engine churns out on the basis of whatever’s in its codebase can thus be a bit like letting your dog choose the best kind of tree for you to plant in front of your house based on which tree she sniffs for the longest amount of time while you’re walking her. Her criteria and yours may not have a whole lot of overlap, and hers might be disproportionately biased toward stuff that stinks. Or, to be a little more charitable, the dog’s criteria may revolve around stuff that isn’t relevant to you.
There are dozens of search operators — keyboard characters or combinations of them that tell a search engine to do specific things — that can be used to focus a search. Occasionally the back-end code changes and a new operator gets added or an old one disabled, so it’s helpful to know where to find a regularly updated list.
The search operators I find most useful from a research perspective haven’t changed in the twenty-odd years I’ve been searching for things on databases and on the Internet, though, so I’ll list them here.
the minus sign ( - ): allows you to omit a search term from your results, e.g. lasagna recipes -mushrooms will give you lasagna recipe results that don’t include the word “mushrooms.” Similarly, and here’s a top tip for my fellow haters of AI, using -AI at the end of a search will exclude AI results.
OR: allows you to get results about either of the search terms on either side of the “or,” e.g. Kirk OR Spock will give you results about either Kirk or Spock
AND: searches for results that include both of the terms on either side of the “and,” e.g. Kirk AND Spock gives you results that include both Kirk and Spock
filetype: searches for particular types of files, for example PDFs, e.g. congressional record filetype:pdf will limit your results to PDFs of the Congressional Record.
define: searches for an actual definition of a word or phrase, e.g. define:operator gives you definitions of the term “operator.” Note that you may need to dig further to find a definition for a specific contextual use of a word or phrase. Contrast the results from define:operator and define:search operator.
quotation marks (“ “): limit the search to precisely the text you include between the quotation marks. For instance, searching for “ozymandias” gets you results that are specific to that word, including the Shelley poem of 1818 and the Breaking Bad episode of 2013 and the Ozymandias character in the late 1980s comic book Watchmen, and a Wikipedia article on the subject “Ozymandias,” among other things.
before: and after: both limit the dates of origin for your results, with before: limiting the search to results that existed prior to a certain date and after: limiting it to those that came after it, e.g. Taylor Swift before:2022 would get you results about La Swift that were created prior to 2022.
Search operators can be combined, and often should be to get you to what you want more expeditiously. For instance, “ozymandias” -breaking bad -watchmen gets you Ozymandias results minus the TV show and the comic book, which might come in handy if you’re really only interested in the poem.
I have found it fast and easy to just know and type in the handful of search operators I regularly use as I search. But if you don’t want to memorize operators, or you need search guidelines you don’t know the operators for, you can use Google’s “Advanced Search” option to use an interface that prompts you to enter a variety of types of information that will limit your search. Find the “Advanced Search” interface at https://www.google.com/advanced_search
Explore specialized search tools
Google’s search tools, which includes the search limiter bar previously mentioned, with the options of searching specific formats (web-only, images, videos, etc.), are not limited to what you see in the bar below the search box on a results page. Here are the specialized Google tools I find myself using most often as a researcher.
Google Books: “the world’s most comprehensive index of full-text books” lets you search virtually anything to see if it’s represented in the books Google has digitized. Note that this does not mean you’ll be able to access the book itself or its contents: copyright restrictions may limit your access and you’ll need to visit a library or buy a copy of the book in question. It can, however, help you get a better idea of whether going out of your way to find a copy of a particular book will be worth your time.
Google’s nGram Viewer: allows you to discover how often a particular term(s) were used in a particular year, based on the digitized contents of books published in that year. This can’t tell you when a term was coined or who coined it, but certainly gives a good suggestion of when a term or idea becomes popular or trendy or gains a new relevance. The word “narcissism,” for instance, was first used to refer to a psychological disorder by British physician Havelock Ellis in 1898, but doesn’t begin to show up in a big way in books until after the 1960s. Its popularity as a term — at least in books — appears to have skyrocketed since 2000.
Google Maps: a mapping platform that combines satellite imagery, street maps, aerial photography, and street photography to provide what is essentially a searchable, zoomable global map that can in some cases zoom you in all the way to viewing individual streets and buildings and generate travel directions. Be aware that Google Maps doesn’t cover absolutely everything, though: some countries have restricted Google’s coverage, and there are also an unknown and probably constantly changing number of specific locations that are omitted including many military and other high-security locations.
Google Earth: using mostly satellite imagery, Google Earth renders a (roughly) 3-D representation of the planet that lets you view locations from various angles and directions. Try a view of the town where I live, if you like.
Google’s actual words: “AI Overviews are a core Google Search feature, like knowledge panels. Features can’t be turned off.”