Google search keeps requiring robot verification

I'm sorry to hear you're experiencing difficulties using Google Search on your Apple devices. I understand you have concerns that iCloud Private Relay could be contributing to this. Let's dive in.

Are your devices up-to-date?

First, you may want to check other factors such as if you are using a public or commercial VPN or if there is a rogue device on your network that is sending Google large volumes of automated requests.

Can you confirm if you are you using iCloud Private Relay on your Apple devices? To use iCloud Private Relay, you must have an iCloud+ membership (do you pay for an iCloud subscription) and have the feature enabled.

If you are using it, let's try turning it off on the affected devices to see if that has an impact on your experience.

On iOS and iPadOS, here's how:

1. Open Settings
2. Visit [Your Name] > iCloud > Private Relay
3. Tap the toggle next to Private Relay to turn it off

If your experience improves, that may have been the issue.

While Private Relay might trigger this, an add-on VPN—if you have one installed—is more likely to trigger this.

I use DuckDuckGo as the default search engine and and use it for the vast majority of searches, and if DDG doesn't find something then I'll add a !g to the DDG search to resubmit the search query to Google.

DDG has less junk than is usually found in the Google results, too.