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Reading Google search results with dyslexia — why SERPs are hard and what actually helps
You type a question into Google and get back a page that mixes ads with organic results, bolds your keywords mid-sentence, stacks knowledge panels next to snippets, and expects you to scan ten blue links in three seconds. For most readers, that page is mildly cluttered. For dyslexic readers, it can be genuinely difficult — not because the words are hard but because of the way the whole screen is laid out.
This guide is about that specific environment: google.com after you hit Enter. Not the articles you click through to — those are covered in the guide on how to read long articles with dyslexia — but the results page itself, which is one of the busiest reading surfaces most of us encounter every day.
Why a search results page is harder than a regular article
Most articles have one job: present a continuous block of text. A Google search results page (technically called a SERP — Search Engine Results Page) has several competing jobs at once, and every one of them creates a different kind of visual demand.
Consider what's actually on screen when you search for something like "best font for dyslexia":
Several problems are happening simultaneously in that block of text. Keywords are bolded in the middle of snippets, which breaks the reading rhythm — your eye expects bold to signal a heading or a pause, but here it signals "this is the word you searched for." The snippet text is cut off mid-sentence, so every snippet ends with an implicit question: is the rest of this sentence relevant? Ads and organic results use almost identical visual treatment, requiring active scanning to tell them apart. And the whole thing is compressed into short bursts separated by thin visual dividers, with the URL in a different colour sandwiched between title and snippet.
None of this is catastrophic for a neurotypical reader — they've trained themselves to skim this layout quickly. But for dyslexic readers, each of those friction points adds up. The broken sentences trigger re-reading. The mid-sentence bold causes saccade confusion. The compressed layout demands rapid switching between text regions that differ in size, colour, and function.
There is also the time pressure that doesn't exist on a regular article. You feel, consciously or not, that you should be able to find the right result quickly. That pressure narrows attention further.
The specific elements that cause the most trouble
Mid-snippet keyword bolding is probably the single biggest issue. A sentence like "Here is what we found about dyslexia and font choice in long reading sessions" has its natural stress in the wrong place. The bold pulls the eye to the search terms rather than to the meaningful content words. For readers who already have difficulty suppressing irrelevant visual salience, this actively misdirects attention.
Featured snippets — those boxed answers at the top of certain result pages — add another layer of complexity. They pull a paragraph from a web page and display it in a highlighted box, often with a table or bullet list inside. The shift in visual treatment signals "pay attention here" but the content is often the densest text on the page: definitions, step-by-step instructions, or comparison tables, all compressed into a small box.
Knowledge panels, which appear on the right side of desktop results for searches about people, places, or organisations, split the reading surface into two columns. Tracking a two-column layout is already harder for dyslexic readers; the right panel usually contains smaller text and denser formatting than the main results.
"People Also Ask" accordions expand dynamically when you click them, shifting the entire page layout below them. For readers who rely on spatial memory to track where they were on the page, a layout shift mid-scroll is particularly disorienting. See the deeper explanation in the post on why dyslexic readers lose their place.
Applying a dyslexia-friendly font to google.com
The most direct intervention is the same one that works on any website: override the font. Installing LexiFont and setting Lexend or Atkinson Hyperlegible as your reading font applies it to google.com just like any other page. The snippet text, the result titles, and the ad copy all switch to your chosen font.
This helps more than you might expect. A significant portion of the scanning difficulty on a results page comes from the default sans-serif Google uses (usually Google Sans or Arial, depending on your platform) rendered at small size. Swapping to Lexend — which was specifically designed to reduce the visual noise between similar letterforms — makes the 13-14px snippet text noticeably easier to parse. The bold keywords are still there, but at least every letter is doing its job clearly.
What doesn't change: the structural complexity of the page. Applying a font override doesn't remove ads, collapse knowledge panels, or stop "People Also Ask" from shifting the layout. For structural issues, you need different tools.
Removing ads with an ad blocker
This is, in practice, the single biggest quality-of-life improvement for dyslexic readers on Google. A well-configured ad blocker like uBlock Origin (free, open source, available on Chrome and Firefox) removes ad blocks from the results page entirely. The first result you see is an organic result. The page becomes shorter. The visual distinction between "ad" and "result" stops being a problem because ads no longer appear.
The effect is similar to what reader mode does for articles, but applied to the results page: it strips away a category of visual noise that requires active attention to classify. For readers who already have a high cognitive load from the text itself, that freed-up attention matters.
If you're hesitant to install a full ad blocker, the same effect for Google specifically can be partially achieved by searching through a privacy-focused search engine that doesn't show ads, such as DuckDuckGo or Kagi. DuckDuckGo is free and has a similar index depth to Google for most queries; Kagi is paid but has no ads at all and lets you customise result rankings.
Using Google Verbatim mode
A less-known fix that specifically helps dyslexic readers: Google Verbatim mode. By default, Google interprets your search — it fixes apparent spelling errors, includes synonyms, and sometimes shows results for what it thinks you meant rather than what you typed. For most users this is helpful. For dyslexic users who know exactly what term they're looking for but who spell it unconventionally, the autocorrection can show results for the wrong word and take a while to identify as such.
To activate Verbatim mode: after your search, click "Tools" (below the search bar, on desktop), then click "All results", then select "Verbatim". Google will now search for exactly the words you typed, with no synonym expansion or autocorrection. This is especially useful when searching for a specific product name, a medication, or a technical term where the exact spelling matters.
Keyboard navigation to avoid re-reading the same result
One pattern many dyslexic readers fall into on results pages: they click a result, it's not useful, they press Back, and then they have to find their place again in the list. The page looks the same but the visited link turns purple — and if you have difficulty tracking colour distinctions, the visual feedback that "this one I've already tried" can be faint.
Chrome has a built-in keyboard shortcut that helps: after your search, pressing Tab cycles through the result links sequentially. You can navigate the entire page without clicking anything, which means you can read titles and snippets in order without losing your scroll position. When you find a result you want, press Enter. After coming back, your position is preserved.
Combined with a font override and an ad blocker, keyboard navigation converts the results page from a click-and-recover experience into a more linear scan, which is considerably easier for dyslexic readers.
Reducing how much you need to scan at all
Some of the most effective strategies for dyslexic readers on Google are about reducing the amount of scanning needed rather than making the scanning easier.
Voice search removes the typing step (which has its own challenges for dyslexic users, separate from reading) and often returns a spoken answer for factual queries — no results page at all. On Chrome, clicking the microphone icon in the search bar activates voice input.
The site: operator narrows results to a single domain. If you know you want NHS information about a symptom, searching site:nhs.uk headache causes gives you only NHS results, which eliminates the scanning decision of "is this source reputable" that adds cognitive load. For research topics, site:gov.uk or site:edu filters work the same way.
For complex questions, going directly to a specific resource rather than searching for it can be faster than any amount of SERP optimisation. If you're looking for a definition, going to Wikipedia directly and using its search bar gives you a single article rather than a page of competing snippets. If you're looking for drug information, going to the NHS drug directory or Drugs.com directly gives you a structured, well-formatted page rather than a mix of pharmacy ads and patient forums.
For reading the articles themselves once you have found the right one, the setup in the guide on reading long articles with dyslexia applies — combined font override, generous spacing, and if needed, reader mode to strip the article of surrounding navigation.
On mobile: fewer features, simpler layout
The Google results page on mobile is actually easier for many dyslexic readers than the desktop version, for a straightforward reason: there is no right-side knowledge panel, and most results appear as a single continuous column rather than a multi-region layout. The trade-off is that the text is small and the ads are still present. On mobile, Chrome's built-in text size setting (Settings > Accessibility > Font size) can bump up the default size site-wide, including on google.com.
LexiFont works in Chrome on Android, so the font override approach applies on mobile too. iOS Chrome supports extensions as of iOS 17, so LexiFont is available there as well. For more on the full mobile reading setup, see reading on mobile with dyslexia.
What a workable setup looks like
The practical stack, in order of impact:
1. Install uBlock Origin — removes ads, reducing visual noise immediately.
2. Install LexiFont (free tier is enough) — set Lexend or Atkinson Hyperlegible as your font. It applies to google.com on every search. The Pro tier adds Atkinson Hyperlegible Next and custom spacing controls, which help with compressed snippet text.
3. Use keyboard Tab navigation to move through results linearly rather than scanning randomly.
4. When you know the domain you want, use site: to skip the scanning step entirely.
5. Use Verbatim mode for technical or medical searches where exact spelling matters.
None of these changes are dramatic on their own. Together they convert the results page from a multi-region visual puzzle into something much closer to a list — shorter, in a font that works for you, with the ads gone and the layout stable.
The goal isn't to make Google look like a blank text file. It's to remove the specific friction that makes scanning results disproportionately costly for dyslexic readers — keyword bolding that redirects the eye, ads that require classification before discarding, and a layout that forces rapid switching between different visual regions. Each fix addresses one of those friction points. They compound.
Further reading
- How to read long articles with dyslexia — a practical workflow
- Reader mode vs reading extensions — which is better for dyslexia?
- Dyslexia and eye tracking — why some readers lose their place
- Dyslexia-friendly news sites — how to make any site readable
- Reading on mobile with dyslexia — iOS and Android settings that help
- How to change the font on any website in Chrome