As Google hasn't seen fit to allow an easy way to disable their bullshit generator — sorry, “AI Overview” — at the top of search results, I thought a simple way to automatically append “ -AI” to my search strings was in order.
Mine is stored in the Global Macro Group, triggered by typing ⌃G
As an alternative, if you find Google's behavior annoying, just switch search engines. It's been roughly six years since I made that decision (I use DuckDuckGo, but there are many others), and I've not missed Google one bit.
Why reward Google's anti-user behavior with continued use of their products?
-rob.
I never thought to use a macro for this, but I also use a variety of search engines for different cases. And this is a big reason for my primary use of Firefox just for Ublock Origin because I can use the element picker for anything not already included in the plethora of premade filters and then simply never have to see nuisances such as these again without having to bother with a hotkey.
You can also append the udm=14 parameter to put you straight onto the "Web" tab:
I used DDG for years, too, but find myself back on Google for various reasons (DDG uses Bing results, etc.; more damning, they’ve admitted they want to provide “answers”, not links, so they’re stealing content as much as any other AI scrapers (cf: Where do DuckDuckGo search results come from? - DuckDuckGo Help Pages)). Also, as a web designer, ignoring Google completely isn’t really an option.
in the tradition of “belt AND suspenders”, I’ve added this parameter to my default search string. I’d heard of this but had forgotten it; thanks for the suggestion!
Serious question: What does this have to do with anything? You can pay attention to what Google "the company that sets web design standards" does without using the products of the company. Or did you mean something else?
As for where the results come from, that matters much less to me than does what the company does with the data they're collecting from my searches. But in that vein, a friend just today told me about mojeek.com, which has their own search spider (not using others results) and doesn't track what you do. In my limited testing so far, I've been happy with its results. (Sadly, Apple won't let you specify any provider as a search provider, so using them is tougher than it should be.)
-rob.
Mostly I mean that Google hasn’t yet salted the earth in the search space enough with AI-generated/summarized results that I can afford not to pay attention to my customers’ site rankings.
Also just came across a mastodon post by Aral Balkan on the topic of DDG: Aral Balkan: "A little reminder that DuckDuckGo is venture capi…" - Aral’s fediverse server
(Anyway, this is all getting pretty off-topic, and Peter’s gonna come down hard on us for this. 
)
Makes sense, thanks for clarifying why you need to use Google.
For me, I don't care how an engine is funded, I only care about my search results and what the company does with my interactions on their site. Google has shown that advertisers are their customers and users are the product, and I find that behavior abhorrent, so I use others' products.
(My business partner feels the same, and I'm certain we've hurt our business because of it, but we both are personally happier, so we think it's a win.)
-rob.
In case you didn’t know: you can do the same sort of thing in Adguard, which can be used with any browser. I understand however if Ublock Origin is a priority for you.
For a more “Apple” experience, the Ublock Origin Firefox extension can be installed in Orion, which, like Safari, uses Webkit. I note though that some Orion users report that “UBlock Origin doesn't work, sometimes”, but you could think of that as just part of the authentic Apple experience these days. 
Not to be confused with Joe Meek. “We just made up a word”[1].
I tried Mojeek years ago and was not at all impressed but it does seem to have improved greatly. Thanks for the tip.
Are you referring to the “search engine” menu in Safari’s preferences? If so, Mojeek suggests setting setting Safari’s homepage to mojeek.com. You could of course add the link to a custom homepage. Anyway, it’s surely more convenient to start a Web search via a prompt in Keyboard Maestro, Alfred etc. It’s certainly not “tough”. 
That would not worry me. What concerns me is that DDG has needed to improve its game dramatically for a long time and I do not see improvements. Its reliance on Bing also means that Windows and other Microsoft products often make their way into results for queries about MacOS!
I doubt it. This is all pertinent to the topic that you started, and the main concern with threads spiralling off-topic is when an OP is left behind.
I think we should mention Brave Search. It is a useful search engine, but has taken to imposing its “Leo” chatbot at the top of search results, and it seems to me that Leo very often uses sources (which it does at least cite) as ingredients for typical LLM word salad. Ironically, if you ask Brave Search how to omit the salad, Leo is very helpful, and provides solutions such as (in the spirit of the original post!) including the flag “answerwithai=0” in search URLs: https://search.brave.com/search?answerwithai=0&q=query
Apart from that, Leo is not actually always useless, but it very often is, and I consider it reprehensible for search engines to have LLM features turned on by default, burning up resources to generate what is frequently a pointless and misleading mishmash.
Yea...
I use my Keyboard Maestro web search macro to do it, but that's extra keystrokes if I'm already in the browser and just want to search for something—I can't just type in the URL bar, but have to invoke my search pop-up. A first world problem indeed, though :).
-rob.
Would a hack like this be suitable? This macro would enter https://www.mojeek.com/search?q= whenever you hit ⌘N (new window) or ⌘T (new tab).
Mojeek search in Safari.kmmacros (4.6 KB)
Sneaky cool macro, and it definitely would work, but I almost never search when opening a new window or tab; I usually know where I want to go if I open a new tab. And I'd have to retrain myself to expect ⌘T to run a search :).
So I'll just keep using my web search pop-up with Mojeek as the default search. ⌘⌥W then enter my search term, done.
-rob.
That was the only situation in which I could imagine that you would need such a trick! Otherwise, would you not be using ⌘L to get to the address bar? An equally convenient hotkey opens your Web search box, so I don’t see how “that's extra keystrokes if I'm already in the browser”—plus, with your method, you don’t have to hesitate to consider whether or not Safari is the frontmost application before instinctively performing the action.
OK, so change the hotkey. That was just for convenience for the usage that I had taken a guess at. Anyway, your existing system seems fine after all, to me!
I almost always use my web search tool. But if I'm actively in Safari, ⌘L—type what I want—then ⌘Enter is a very fast combination to use to search and open results in a new tab. Yes, would be faster with ⌘T tied to search and new tab opening, no doubt ... but would require retraining too many years of muscle memory :).
I was mainly complaining about Apple limiting our choices of default search engines. There's absolutely no reason to restrict it; we should be able to use anything we want, even if we have to define the search syntax for them.
-rob.
Apple? Limiting our choices? I’m shocked!
Well, they don’t yet limit us to using Safari, but—that’s another conversation!
Rob. Shouldn't this all be in the 'Outback Lounge'? Just asking.
Or it might be only an extension away...
The Customise Search Engine Extension on the App Store.
I believe it'll even (getting back on topic) let you set your default to Google but with the added udm=14 option.
I have not tried it myself, it's just something I've heard about.
OK, that's pretty cool—I hadn't seen that before despite searching for such a thing. It does have to work in a sort of janky way, due to Apple's restrictions. You basically set your search engine to one of Apple's defaults in both Safari and the CSE extension. But then you can enter a custom URL in CSE that gets executed instead of the defined search engine.
In use, it's slightly visually jarring, as it has to load the defined search engine, but then redirects to your specified URL while showing a page with a feedback button on it. And once it loads, the URL bar still shows the Safari-defined search engine until you press Escape. But it does work.
Thanks!
-rob.
