Is it time to switch to Bing? Searching for words like “ignore” or “ignore” disrupts AI overviews in Google Search

Google Search has problems with certain search words
It seems that AI overviews treat these words as commands
One of the words that causes problems for users is “contempt”

Just a few days ago, Google unveiled a slew of updates that will effectively turn its famous search engine into an AI bot interface, but it looks like there will be a few glitches along the way: Searches for words like “ignore” or “ignore” are currently breaking AI overviews in Google search.

As discovered by reporter Thomas Maxwell and others (via Android Police), typing these words results in a lot of white space at the top of the screen, and the usual blue link search results appear somewhere further down the page.

What’s missing is the AI summary that now appears at the top of most search results pages on Google. It seems that the AI is getting confused and thinking that these words are being issued as commands instead of search queries.

Our future of AI search

@mweinbach what’s going on with google man pic.twitter.com/Cur1rAcHEp May 22, 2026

Google will no doubt fix this bug before too long, but it’s a reminder that AI can and will make mistakes, as Google will tell you every time you get answers within the Gemini AI app (in very small text at the bottom of the screen).

You don’t have to look hard online to find some pretty negative reactions to Google’s AI failure, and there seems to be a significant number of users who prefer to stick with the old way of searching the web, without all the added AI.

However, for Google this is the future. You know your search business is under threat if people start using AI chatbots like ChatGPT to find all their information, so you want to get ahead of the competition with your own AI offerings.

If you want to stick with the old way of browsing the web, and perhaps provide more support to writers and editors along the way, then search engine alternatives like DuckDuckGo and Kagi are available, and there’s always Bing too. These portals have their own artificial intelligence features, but they are not as prominent as Google’s.