There must be somebody out there who enjoys Google AI summaries – a patient, optimistic technophile who, rather than turning to Google Search for accurate information, sees it more as a wide-eyed toddler who is learning to understand the world. For the rest of us, who think of Google Search as a tool that should return helpful answers, the AI overviews are annoying at best and infuriating at worst.
Previously, you could remove AI results by adding %s to your search, but Google seems to have closed that loophole. The persistence of AI results has seemingly frustrated people to the point where they’re begging Google to just “give me the f*cking links.”
Hence, introducing “f*cking” to search terms. This has proven to be an effective way to get straight to search results, without having to scroll past a potentially unhelpful summary.
Does it still work?
Short answer: yes, sort of. In our extremely thorough research,* we discovered that profanity knocks out AI results most of the time, although it will sometimes still pop up. It doesn’t seem to matter where you put your profanity in the sentence; as long as it’s in there, it works.
Why do curse words get rid of AI summaries? It’s not clear, but it seems to be due to Google’s efforts to keep its AI from swearing. Reporters from Ars Technica and Gizmodo have speculated that Google AI takes a conservative approach to regulating unsafe or NSFW content, and that it’s better for the AI not to return a result at all than to return one with unsavory language.
There is a less profane solution if you don’t want AI in your search results: just add -ai to your query. It doesn’t remove “featured snippets,” but it will remove AI overviews, so you can get to the links faster. Adding &udm=14 also works, although it’s a bit more cumbersome.
But if you want the catharsis of cursing, “f*ck” is always there for you.
*We spent 10 minutes typing things into Google and then called it a day
