There are many searchers who have been using Google daily that are heading to the Google Web Search Help forums to ask how they can turn off the new AI Overviews within the Google Search results. As you know, AI Overviews started to roll out on Tuesday and some searchers simply do not want it.
But no, there is no way to opt out of AI Overviews in Google Search in the US. They are going to be turned on for all searchers in the US in the next few days and then for more users around the world later this year.
Here is a screenshot of some of the threads in the Google help forums, each thread can have dozens of searchers within the thread asking the same question. And trust me, most searchers who do not want this feature, do not head to the forums to complain:
Keep in mind, this is not even fully rolled out in the US – in fact, I think most people in the US do not even see it yet.
Here are some of the specific complaints, similar to what we saw when Google began testing SGE in the wild back in March.
I have tried to turn off the Google SGE results in Labs, but it’s already off. I’ve tried restarting my browser and computer, but no help. I want to see results actually written by people, not generative AI.
In multiple instances, the first search result is exactly what I wanted, but the AI wildly misinterpreted my query. It’s a horrible, intrusive feature that ruins my browsing experience. If there’s no fix, this might be the last straw that gets me to switch to Firefox and DuckDuckGo.
If I can’t turn off ai from Google…. Is Google trying to kill their search engine?
