Google May Have Created an AI-Powered Search Product That I Actually Like
Google is back with a new AI-powered search feature. But unlike AI Overviews , which tries to summarize the answer to your search query, or AI Mode , which uses generative AI to produce more detailed and useful results, Web Guide is much simpler: It’s designed to make search results easier to browse and show you links you wouldn’t otherwise find.
Google announced Web Guide in a short blog post on Thursday , and it’s not much of a big deal. Once you enable the feature in Google Labs, you can try it out with any search query. Google suggests “open” queries, like “how to travel alone in Japan,” or “detailed queries,” like “my family lives in different time zones. What are the best tools for staying connected and intimate despite the distance?” But technically, the feature works with any query you’d normally search for on Google.
The idea behind this feature is this: Instead of displaying AI summaries, it simply groups relevant links into different categories. Since Google doesn’t try to uncover the content of each link using AI, you still have to click on all relevant links. However, this grouping can make it easier to find the content you want or find different types of links in a single search.
My experience with Web Guide
After enabling the new feature on my personal account, I tried running a few queries to see what Google was trying to achieve.
My first attempt was to search for “generative AI news.” After clicking the search button, Google instantly loaded two links at the top of the page that it thought were relevant. One was from TechCrunch, and the other was from the AI Business website. Both links led to news about generative AI.
Below, I watched Google’s AI load an entire page of search results, which took about five seconds. The results start with a summary of my query, including the phrase “generative AI is growing rapidly” (thanks for the tip), and two recent news items: the release of Grok 4 and the arrival of Qwen3-Coder.
Scroll further down the page, and you’ll finally get to the result groups. Each group has a title (e.g. “Aggregated Generative AI News”), a short description of the results, and, of course, links. The first two groups in my results only had two links, but subsequent groups offered a “More” button that added two or three more links.
Some of these groups might be useful: one, “AI Communities and Forums,” led me to four different subreddits, three of which are devoted to discussing AI in some form (r/machinelearningnews, r/generativeai, and r/localllama). The fourth simply linked to an article about AI on r/technews — which might be useful if the Reddit thread was AI-related, but wouldn’t necessarily help me find new AI communities if that’s what I was looking for.
Others were a bit odd, however: AI News Aggregators, for example, offered one link to r/machinelearningnews and three links to articles describing various AI news aggregators. Note that these weren’t AI news aggregators, but AI-powered news aggregators.
My second search was more successful. I searched for “best Mac for students.” The first group tried to find links to MacBook recommendations for students: three out of four did, and one was a CNET article about the best MacBooks tested overall, not specifically for college. Still, useful! The next group was also helpful, as Google returned four different Reddit threads about MacBooks for college — three of which were asking which MacBook is best for college, and one asking whether the MacBook is the best choice among other products.
A few groups down was a section called “Compare MacBook Models,” with two links: one to Apple’s official “Which Mac is Best for Me?” page, and one to Mac Business Solutions , a Maryland-based computer repair shop. Its Mac comparison guide seems to be useful for parents and students looking to buy a Mac for college, and it’s what the AI placed next to Apple in this group. I tested “best MacBook for college” in a standard Google search, and the site only showed up on page four of the results, so it’s refreshing to see such a specialized site in the results for this web guide.
Damn, do I really like the AI-powered search feature?
More web guide, less AI mode please
I don’t want AI to summarize my content with varying degrees of accuracy . However, I don’t mind AI making the information I’m looking for more visual and accessible.
The Web Guide is a brand new, experimental feature, and it shows. I’m not sure I’ll use it in its current form, but I have a vision. I’d like to see more links, more relevant ones in each group, and I’d like to see a wider selection of groups than I’ve gotten so far. But the idea of grouping relevant links together and scrolling through them, rather than a bunch of individual links, is very appealing to me. I like that I still click on each relevant link, so I’m both interacting with the content and supporting it as I visit the site.
But perhaps what I love most is the ability to find links I wouldn’t have found otherwise. I’m unlikely to scroll through four pages of Google to find something like “best MacBook for college,” but with Web Guide I can see a link from a site that would normally be on that fourth page. That’s what excites me about apps like Web Guide. Let’s focus on AI tools that still support websites (especially small ones) while improving search, rather than assuming that everyone wants answers from a bot that ’s probably just making up those results .
How to try web guide
If you want to try this experience yourself, visit the official Search Labs by Web Guide page . Click the toggle to turn the feature on, then click Search in Web Guide to start searching, or click the new Web tab that appears when you start a new search.
Ironically, it appears to replace a web filter that removes AI from search entirely . To get it back, you’ll have to disable Web Guide.