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&udm=14 – easy access to an AI-free Google search
- konspence 2y agoI have a personal distaste for the multi-syllable word in the headline. I acknowledge that may be a 'me' thing, though I do have reasons which are off-topic. But seeing it prominently displayed on the homepage of this site is offputting, regardless of my feelings about the word in general.
- decremental 2y ago[dead]
- amatecha 2y agoThat's how I feel about "performant". Unfortunately I'll never stop seeing such jargon every day or two, working in tech. It is what it is, I guess. :\
- dgellow 2y agoWhat’s the problem with performant?
- euroderf 2y agoYou have to ask ?
- amatecha 2y agoIt means "of or pertaining to performance". Like "the performant qualities of this software are currently being evaluated", or the one example of its original meaning I could find from Cambridge Dictionary, "What follows is a series of re-mappings of both the performant and the referent functions that emphasizes the collective performance." The word itself doesn't indicate efficient/good performance, nor poor/slow/etc. ... It just refers to the quality or property of performance. For some reason, very recently it started being used to mean "performs well" or "performs optimally" and has transformed into jargon.
- dancemethis 2y agoYeah, "Konami" has been a consistent bad time.
- dang 2y agoWe've replaced it with the subtitle now.
- banish-m4 2y agoAI is simultaneously overhyped in application but under-appreciated in terms of long-term implications.
- garrickvanburen 2y agoPlz elaborate on long-term implications.
- postalrat 2y agoIf you really want to know ask AI.
- torgeros 2y agoFyi, google just announced a new "Web" search option (in the ...More menu next to Images, News and so on). This skips all the AI stuff, too.
- hutattedonmyarm 2y agoThis is exactly that. All this site does is direct to the "Web" search option in Google. Hence the name "&udm=14", because that is the query parameter causing Google to display the web search option
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- f_devd 2y agoDoesn't fix ranking unfortunately
- b0ner_t0ner 2y agoYou will still have to manually dig for gold in this SEO Wasteland.
- effdee 2y agoThis pairs quite well with &tbs=li:1 ("Verbatim" search).
- xcdzvyn 2y ago[dead]
- mdaniel 2y agoAre these params documented, or just reverse engineered from the JS or something? TFA didn't cite its source, either
- eichin 2y agoOn a plain search, click on more, click on web, and then look at the URL you end up on, it's right there. (So, in the most limited sense of the word, "reverse engineered" but in a way that is less work than finding documentation would be if there were any :-)
- akasakahakada 2y agoBut verbatim is not useful these days imo. Usually I rather accept that there doesn't exist such information than waste time in googling stuff.
- metadat 2y agoIt still works, sometimes. Usually in the afternoon.
- jimbobthrowawy 2y agoIf you're in a region that google defaults to another language, &hl=en (or another language code) is very useful. Nowadays I mainly use it for the maps site, but I've used it elsewhere before when I couldn't struggle through a website in another language. It's very hard to get it into certain google products, like recaptcha. So I have to learn the words for what it wants clicked. I don't know if parsing the Accept-Language header is too slow, or if google's trying to encourage people to log in to an account.
- Pesthuf 2y agoI hope we get extensions that auto-append this soon.
- wwillyw 2y agoYou can sort of fake it with Chrome settings by setting up a site search that's just like the default Google one but with whatever you want tacked on. Add a site search called Google2 or whatever, use shortcut 'g' and for the URL add '{google:baseURL}search?q=%s&{google:RLZ}{google:originalQueryForSuggestion}{google:assistedQueryStats}{google:searchFieldtrialParameter}{google:language}{google:prefetchSource}{google:searchClient}{google:sourceId}{google:contextualSearchVersion}ie={inputEncoding}&udm=14' Then just type 'g' + <space> + 'your search parms' in the address bar, you don't even need to navigate to Google.com first
- shostack 2y agoIs there anything that can get this to replace the results from the default Android search bar?
- futhey 2y agoFYI You can set your default Chrome search engine to be a site search, including one that searches https://www.google.com/search?udm=14&q=%s https://www.google.com/search?udm=14&q=%s
- violet13 2y agoUnfortunately, this throws the baby out with the bathwater - you also lose all the useful non-AI widgets, like calculator, unit conversions, instant weather, maps, etc. There are other tools for that, but I confess that I've gotten used to defaulting to the address bar for random queries like that - the browser is always open.
- shortformblog 2y agoCreator here. All you have to do to get those things back is just hit the “all” tab on your results, or if you use a search with "&udm=14" added, just keep the original Google around as a second search. I personally use “g” for full-fat Google and “gw” for Web only. This obviously doesn’t solve every problem with Google, and it cuts in some ways. Obviously, if you are searching for, say, when a restaurant is open, you are going to want to use the knowledge panels. The goal of this is to make up for those situations where you need a simplified view, but Google has intentionally made it hard to reach that view.
- violet13 2y agoMy point is that when you have it configured the usual way, you can type "2 + 2 =" in the address bar and get the result. Which, you know, is sort of convenient. Or "weather mountain view ca", or whatever. If you change your default search to udm=14, you lose that. Sure, you can click around on the now-useless results page to get back to standard Google and get the answer, but that's friction that wasn't there before. The parameter doesn't just kill the AI stuff.
- shortformblog 2y agoI mean, I absolutely understand your point. I guess I would push back and say that the friction of not having easily accessible web results is much larger, and given that this was the original intended purpose of Google, it feels like there should be a method where that takes precedence. Going back to the “All” page is a single click on a button that never moves. The “Web” mode is two clicks, minimum, each time, and the link is often never in the same place, making it difficult to get muscle memory. You are basically deciding between two levels of frustration, and for many users, the latter wins. In your case, it sounds like the former does. I absolutely do not think in your case, you should make udm14 your home page. There may be a UX solution that could be put in place here, so the original search is still accessible from the site if you want it. But for people whose goal is to find information from websites, this is a change that may absolutely be welcomed by them. Let’s not let it be lost here that the real problem is that Google arguably ruined its knowledge panels by treating the AI results like one.
- shortformblog 2y agoHi all, I made this in literally an hour after I saw a very strong response to my original blog post about the URL code: https://tedium.co/2024/05/17/google-web-search-make-default/ https://tedium.co/2024/05/17/google-web-search-make-default/ The problem I was attempting to solve here was one of convenience, really. I think Google is intentionally trying to make its AI search look better by burying more traditional results in a way that is not easy to find. Given how widely used Google is, I just do not think it’s fair to end users that there’s a lightweight option that gives people 90% of what they want from Google results, and they’re hiding it for what appear to be business reasons. I guess in a way, it’s a simple protest dressed up as an easy-to-use tool. I trust that most HN users are likely smart enough to figure out how to work around the Google issue without this site, but I think the solution is ultimately for the people who can’t or won’t make those changes themselves, or just want an easy starting point. My other goal with this was an attempt to make the code “famous,” by making it something that people knew about. On that count, it appears successful, as the &udm=14 fix has been covered broadly in media and has been frequently shared on social media. This link has gone pretty viral in the last four days, well beyond the tech sphere, and at current count has seen more than 100,000 visitors since Wednesday. Not bad for a site that is literally a few Tailwind classes and a simple HTML page built by hand.
- AnonC 2y agoAt least on mobile, this one has way too much text cramped on that screen with too many distracting colors (I understand that the colors are from Google’s logo). Some of the text is promotional links (not necessarily harmful to the user). A simple “old style Google” search page, with a clear title that it’s AI free Google search and just one link to explain what &udm=14 is, would look a lot nicer. As it stands now, most people wouldn’t know or understand what this is because they’d skip long walls of small text. The link to the page explaining how to add this as a default and every other promotional link can go into that page.
- shortformblog 2y agoI will keep tweaking the UX. The thing is, people are raising complaints in real time (Why isn’t this working for me? Is this safe?) and I am trying to quickly address them. It is very much a repairing-a-car-already-in-motion situation.
- rldjbpin 2y agofor all the costs associated with running the new features, i wonder why there is not a search preferences option to toggle AI responses? it seems that even people engaging in shady activities tend to google search while logged in (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40456722 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40456722), it seems like a simple and ergonomic solution for most people, which would also work across devices.