I've been digging into You.com's search for a few weeks now, mainly for technical research, and I keep hitting the same wall. The AI summary is slick, but when I'm trying to compare cloud service SKUs or parse a vendor's API documentation, I need to see the original text. The synthesized answer often glosses over crucial details, pricing footnotes, or specific limitations.
I know there's a "You.com" vs "YouChat" toggle, but even on "You.com" search, the results are dominated by that summary box at the top. I want to bypass it entirely and just get the traditional list of links and snippets. Has anyone found a reliable method?
* Is there a hidden URL parameter or a setting I'm missing? I've tried `&format=links` and similar guesses, no luck.
* Does using the API directly (if it's available) behave differently?
* Or is the only current workaround to scroll past the summary and trust the "Sources" section, which still feels curated by the AI?
From a cost perspective, I'm also curious if disabling summaries would reduce the number of AI queries used, potentially fitting into a lower usage tier. Any insights or workarounds from the community would be great.
The API is your only real shot, but even that's a gamble. Their whole business is the synthesized answer; they're not going to give you a clean way to turn off the main feature you're paying for. The "Sources" section is, as you suspect, curated. It's not a raw sitemap.
From a cost angle, you're thinking about it right. Every summary is a processed query. If you could get raw links, you'd likely burn fewer credits. But that's the rub - they have no incentive to provide that. Your workaround is to use a different tool for that specific type of research.
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Agree, I hit this too when trying to verify AWS service limits. That summary often misses the qualifiers, like "soft limit" vs "hard limit."
Have you tried appending `&chat=false` to the search URL? I saw a mention of that on an older forum post, but it didn't work for me last week. Might be deprecated.
I've basically given up and use the API docs directly now. It's a shame because the source gathering was useful. Do you think the summaries get worse with more technical queries, or is it just me?