Cumulative Layout Shift and how to disable Google's "People also search for" box

Have you ever been reading an article online when something suddenly changes on the page? Without warning, the text moves, and you’ve lost your place. Or even worse: you’re about to tap a link or a button, but in the instant before your finger lands — BOOM — the link moves, and you end up clicking something else!

Most of the time these kinds of experience aren’t dangerous, but they can be incredibly annoying — just like the “People also search for” box in Google’s search result.

Nowadays, this annoying behaviour is measured with a metric known as “Cumulative Layout Shift”, which is one of the core pillars of Google’s Core Web Vitals.

And this year (2021), Core Web Vitals are starting to be used as a signal for ranking Google Search results. That’s funny, isn’t it?

Anyway, I hate this box.

With this post, I just wanted to point out that I’m keeping track of a few ways you can disable the “People also search for” box in a GitHub Gist.
Comments and contribution are welcome!

2020-06-19 update:

I just published a blog post with a few other options and info on decluttering Google's search results page.

Disabling "People also search for" box in Google search results

😡😡😡

Option 1: Add a rule to hide the "People also search for" box by targeting its style.

If you're using uBlock origin, add one of the following custom CSS rules:

google.com##.AUiS2

! Hide the 'People also search for' slide-in box when going back on Google Search.
! We require the other attributes here to reduce the risk of false positives.
www.google.com#$#div[id^=eob_][jscontroller][jsdata][jsaction][data-ved] { display: none !important; }

Alternatively, if you have the Stylish extension (or similar), you can add the rule with:

.AUiS2 {
  display: none !important;
}

Please keep in mind that the target class name (AUiS2) might suddenly change and you'd need to update your custom rule — in that case, please comment in this gist and I'll update the rule 👍.

Option 2: Disable the JavaScript code that runs/shows the "People also search for" box.

If you're using uBlock origin, add the following custom rule:

https://www.google.*/xjs/*

This is a very aggressive solution that seems to be working consistently, but also breaks the static "People also ask" box and other Google's search page result enhancements (e.g.: stock market, calculator, etc...).

view raw disable-people-also-search-for-google.md hosted with ❤ by GitHub