Google goes old school, adds text-only ‘Web’ filter to search
Not content to just let us sit with the news of AI Overviews coming to search, Google has launched a new “Web” filter in search that will show you only text-based links in results. Looks like there’s still room for a little old school internet within the AI of it all.
Launched on Tuesday to coincide with the tech giant’s I/O event, the additional filter will let you switch between Google’s refined results tabs as you would with Images, News, Videos etc. The “Web” tab was launched in the U.S. yesterday and will roll out globally Wednesday.
Google’s Public Liaison for Search, Danny Sullivan, posted a thread about the new filter on X, formerly Twitter.
“We’ve added this after hearing from some that there are times when they’d prefer to just see links to web pages in their search results, such as if they’re looking for longer-form text documents, using a device with limited internet access, or those who just prefer text-based,” a post read.
It’s one of a flurry of announcements made at Google’s I/O developer-focused event, particularly around Search, The company also announced the rollout of AI Overviews in the U.S. (worldwide soon) that will show AI-generated summaries atop results, as well as Search by Video, Planning with Search, and Contextual Search — Mashable’s Chance Townsend has more detail on these.
The I/O event also saw the company drop plenty of AI announcements centred around Gemini 1.5 Pro and Gemini 1.5 Flash, including DJ mode for Google’s Music FX, an Ask Photos feature, AI personal assistants known as AI Agents, a video generator like OpenAI’s Sora called Veo, and plenty more.
Mashable’s Tim Marcin has a guide to I/O for you, check out everything Google announced.
