14 DAY TRIAL // We’ve known for a while that integrating the web search in the default Windows 10 search experience isn’t necessarily the best way to go, but here’s more evidence in this regard if you still needed it.
Some users are now seeing random web results in the search box whenever they search for a specific keyword. By the looks of things, the displayed Bing results have nothing to do with the keyword that was provided in the search box.
Several Windows 10 users have confirmed in this reddit thread that the bug happens on their devices too, and some say that a simple reboot of the computer fixes the whole thing.
In one case, simply searching for “S” in the Windows 10 search UI indeed provides a link to the Settings app, but the web search returns results that have nothing to with such a term. One of the results is a Wikipedia link for the “W” keyword.
Just disable Bing results
At this point, it’s not exactly clear what’s happening, but if a system reboot doesn’t bring things to normal, you can just disable Bing results from the Windows 10 search experience completely.
To do this, just launch the Registry Editor and look for the following path:
Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer
Just create a new DWORD (if it’s not there already) that is called DisableSearchBoxSuggestions and then set its value to 1. Reboot your computer and the web search results should no longer be offered in the Windows 10 search experience.
The aforementioned bug seems to be happening on all Windows 10 versions, including the May 2020 Update whose rollout is still under way. There’s a chance that the bug is caused by a server problem, as the recent cumulative updates are unlikely to be the ones to blame for the whole thing.