I don't know why Microsoft updated Windows 10 version 2004 to ignore their own Group Policy setting. I hope this is a bug because there are very legitimate reasons for organizations not wanting to enable web-search in the Start Menu and it would be foolish of Microsoft to wantonly open-up their users to security risks for the sake of driving traffic to Bing.

According to this page: https://www.bennetrichter.de/en/tutorials/windows-10-disable-web-search/ the DisableSearchBoxSuggestions policy for Explorer should work.

1. Open regedit.exe.
2. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer (create the Explorer key if it doesn't already exist).
3. Create a DWORD value named DisableSearchBoxSuggestions and set it to 1.
4. Restart your computer (or kill and restart all Explorer.exe process instances).

I have the latest Windows 10 group policy ADMX templates on my computer and my domain controller and I don't see DisableSearchBoxSuggestions listed. This is curious.

Update

I just restarted Explorer.exe now and I can confirm it works, phew!

Screenshot proof (note the lack of "Web" options and the "Bing rewards" display is gone too):

I don't know why Microsoft updated Windows 10 version 2004 to ignore their own Group Policy setting. I hope this is a bug because there are very legitimate reasons for organizations not wanting to enable web-search in the Start Menu and it would be foolish of Microsoft to wantonly open-up their users to security risks for the sake of driving traffic to Bing.

According to this page: https://www.bennetrichter.de/en/tutorials/windows-10-disable-web-search/ the DisableSearchBoxSuggestions policy for Explorer should work.

1. Open regedit.exe.
2. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer (create the Explorer key if it doesn't already exist).
3. Create a DWORD value named DisableSearchBoxSuggestions and set it to 1.
4. Restart your computer (or kill and restart all Explorer.exe process instances).

I have the latest Windows 10 group policy ADMX templates on my computer and my domain controller and I don't see DisableSearchBoxSuggestions listed. This is curious.

Update

I just restarted Explorer.exe now and I can confirm it works, phew!

Screenshot proof (note the lack of "Web" options and the "Bing rewards" display is gone too):

Update 2:

So the DisableSearchBoxSuggestions registry entry actually corresponds to an existing Group Policy setting dating back to Windows 7. In the Group Policy editor you can get to it from:

• Policies
  • User Configuration
    • Administrative Templates
      • Windows Components
        • File Explorer
          • "Turn off display of recent search entries in the File Explorer search box"