The old web search didn’t do that. They didn’t even have your location data, so how would they be able to know which locations were near to you? I think that was something added when they added google maps. You used to have to go to burger king’s location page and put in a postal code on their site to figure out locations.
So it doesn’t seem like it’s a problem with google adding things to the search results, it’s just they recently added something you don’t like. And yeah the results aren’t as good as they used to be, but that’s a separate problem.
They really should just give an option to disable gemini in the results. It really should’ve been added as a separate tab like images and maps.
Google web search still exists, add &udm=14 to query something like: https://www.google.com/search?q=whatever&udm=14
It exists but it still sucks terribly.
If I search on “Burger King locations near me” I get a list of KFCs. And one Burger King approximately a thousand kilometres away.
The correct answer is that there’s two Burger Kings within walking distance of me, and that KFC isn’t Burger King.
I just use Google Maps for that.
The old web search didn’t do that. They didn’t even have your location data, so how would they be able to know which locations were near to you? I think that was something added when they added google maps. You used to have to go to burger king’s location page and put in a postal code on their site to figure out locations.
So it doesn’t seem like it’s a problem with google adding things to the search results, it’s just they recently added something you don’t like. And yeah the results aren’t as good as they used to be, but that’s a separate problem.
They really should just give an option to disable gemini in the results. It really should’ve been added as a separate tab like images and maps.