How To Disable Google Realtime Search

A week ago, Google introduced real-time search – a new feature that displays live updates from sites like Twitter and FriendFeed as part of the normal search results. Reactions were generally positive, but, as multiple users noted, there was one thing missing – an “off” button. You could pause the live updates, but not get rid of them entirely – until today. Today, I present you a way to remove the realtime search widget from your Google results.

Disable Google Realtime Search

I’ve written a Greasemonkey script that hides the “Latest results for “keyword”” box. It also suspends the live updates, preventing Google from wasting your bandwidth needlessly. Just install this userscript, and you won’t see the real-time results again.

Install “Disable Google Realtime Search” (2 KB)

Compatible browsers :

Sidenote : Even with this script installed, you can still access the realtime results directly by clicking on the “Latest updates” link in search options.

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6 Responses to “How To Disable Google Realtime Search”

  1. Bryce E Bob says:

    Could this be done for Safari as well?

  2. White Shadow says:

    Theoretically, though I haven’t tried it myself. See this tutorial.

  3. Ross says:

    Thank god. I got my first search result that had the updating realtime results in it and holy useless shit Batman! What use is this other than to get people’s crappy Twitters about a topic?

  4. Nicholas says:

    Ugh, I totally agree. I use firefox’s awesomebar for most of my site pulling up, and guess what happens if the almighty google decides that latest results are on top of the list? You get their search page instead of the usual “lucky search” result. Totally broken.

    Is there a way to fix the awesomebar results if they are redirected because of this “feature”? I mean until they provide a way to turn the feature off of course, because I can’t possibly be the only one that doesn’t give a flying twat about Twitter.

  5. Popop says:

    Is there an updated version of this? It doesn’t seem to work anymore.

  6. White Shadow says:

    Yep, it’s broken. I’ll fix it when I have time.

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