Google has now started displaying a Sidebar on the Search Result Pages, when you perform any search. The new list of options would be useful to many but for people like us, who love Google only for the clean looks, this is something irritating and we need to get this fixed. Hence here is a quick solution for the same.
- Mozilla Firefox : First of all you need to install the GreaseMonkey Add-on for Firefox browser, which can be downloaded here. Once its installed you need to restart your browser and then proceed towards the next step.
Next you will have to visit this link, which is a script created by some excellent developer. Click on the Install button and it will add the script to your GreaseMonkey add-on automatically and instantly Enable it too.
- Google Chrome : In case of the Chrome Browser you need to install a Google Chrome Extension which would disable the new sidebar and give you back the same old look with limited stuff. Visit this link and then click on the Install button to proceed and complete the installation process.
You will find a new icon next to the Address Bar in Google, with the Extension Enabled right away, hiding the Google Options section totally in Chrome Browser.
Next, again access the Google Search Result Pages like this – http://www.google.com/search?q=Amit+Bhawani and you will find that the Sidebar won’t be displayed. If you carefully observe the Google Result Page loading then the sidebar does display for a second on the browser following which the script hides it totally from our view.
These new options on the sidebar are :
Everything – This would enable you to search all the types of content for a given query
Images – This option would enable you to search the Google Images section, though the same link is already available in the top navigation links in Google Search, hence no point of a duplicate option.
Updates – This is one excellent option, which would allow you to search in Real Time with data fetched from different social media websites and news portals. Useful when you need to find about some latest trend.
Other Options here are Videos, Maps, News, Shopping, Books, Blogs, Discussions etc.
The above listed options are for both the Browsers Google Chrome & Mozilla Firefox, while other browser users like Internet Explorer, Safari, Opera should expect a permanent solution soon, though till then they can start accessing the Google Website through an alternative link which does not have the sidebar displayed here
About Amit Bhawani
Wow…amazing greasemonkey.
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Amit, GreaseMonkey Scripts can also run opera, In opera the scripts are called user scripts.
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Free – Gizmo – Firefox & Chrome – Sidebar on/off/on/off with a click – seotools.com/hide-google-options/
Supports ccTLD’s.
Better solution than others
Released April 21st – so the solution was there.
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Brilliant tool ty,
Is Google is trying piss people off so they use Bing ? i think this sidebar may lose a good few users
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I am also feeling uncomfortable with this Google new look. Now going to remove sidebar after reading this article
Thanks Amit
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The only possible reason for Google NOT offering the option to collapse the sidebar is the hope that they will generate a few more ad-clicks by drawing the user’s eye away from the relevant search results. Pretty low for a company whose mission statement is all about the user experience. http://tinyurl.com/38jjbyr
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The Userscript page for the Greasemonkey script is now offline.
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Seems setting HTTP UserAgent to Opera/8 makes
google search normal again.
Chrome/Iron command line
–user-agent=”Opera/8″
Firefox addon BrowserMasquerade
http://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/212320
Follow the Help to create settings.
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Is their not a option in Firefox to directly disable it? Would you like to run another script on Firefox to disable sidebar? or you would like to just keep it like that !! In my sense it better to keep the sidebar instead of running a script on Firefox which consumes resources.
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