How to get UNBIASED search results from Google Search widget??

[tbessie]

Hey all...

When I search from my Google Search widget (Galaxy Nexus, Android 4.2), and also from the standard Android browser, it ALWAYS returns biased search results.

That is to say, it favors:

Google Play store
Android application-oriented results
Displays a "card" with what it thinks is what I most want (eg. weather card, flight arrival time card, restaurant review card)

... instead of just giving me an unbiased set of search results.

Does anyone know if there is any way to make the Google Search widget (and google search from the standard browser) return regular, unbiased results, as if I were using a desktop browser?

I can do this by turning on "Request Desktop Site" (tho' that doesn't seem to work too well for the standard browser, but instead works in Chrome and Firefox), but I don't want to do that. I'd like the Google Search widget to return results that ignore the fact that I'm on a phone. Most of the time I want to see the regular, unbiased results, and instead I get lots of pointers to apps I can buy or what Google thinks I want to see. I'd like some way of turning this off.

Is there some other search widget that does this, if it's impossible to turn off?

I'm starting to hate Google for forcing me to view what it thinks I want to see.

By the way, no need to mention the idea of turning off showing "personalized" results on my Google account. Doing that has no effect on these results, I've found.

- Tim

 

[chanchan05]

I think it depends on what you are searching. I rarely see anything related to play store or stuff by Google when I search. I get the usual Wikipedia articles or sites regarding the entry itself. You mean to say that the results from the search app differs than when you search on a PC?

 

[tbessie]

I think it depends on what you are searching. I rarely see anything related to play store or stuff by Google when I search. I get the usual Wikipedia articles or sites regarding the entry itself. You mean to say that the results from the search app differs than when you search on a PC?

Yep. In general I would like to get rid of all the "cards" before the main search results, but also the "you're on an android phone so you must mean X" results.

For some reason, I was seeing a good example of this this morning, but now I can't seem to recreate it. I will see what I can do to produce a good example of this and post here again with a specific search string.

- Tim

 

[DaveSyd]

Try going to Google Search app, then when it brings up the field and keyboard hit Menu, settings.

Experiement with these; eg turn off "Use my Location" or perhaps "Use Google.com" (instead of the local country site you are on)??

 

[ren857]

It sounds like you're using the widget to search. It will search device related things first because that's a feature of the search function on your device.

Open up your browser and go to google.com and search from there.

 

[dvhttn]

Try not using Google for search .....

Dave

 

[tbessie]

Try not using Google for search .....

Dave

Hee hee. You funnee!

- Tim

 

[fdbryant3]

Today's Google is designed to give you search results personalized for you. The only way I know of to get around this is to log out of your Google Account which is not really practical on the phone. My advice is to replace the search widget with a different search engine like Bing or DuckDuckGo.

 

[tbessie]

Today's Google is designed to give you search results personalized for you. The only way I know of to get around this is to log out of your Google Account which is not really practical on the phone. My advice is to replace the search widget with a different search engine like Bing or DuckDuckGo.

I've tried DuckDuckGo - a bit slow and not as configurable as I'd like. I've tried Bing too, better but still not great. I might reinstall Bing just to have it around. It's funny, because if you search for "android sucks" kinds of things in Google on the phone, you don't see nearly as much bad Google press as when you do it on Bing... the bias of each company is so amazingly obvious, it's laughable.

Thanks for your suggestions, tho'!

- Tim