With privacy being such a concern, you would be surpised to know (if you don’t already) how much information Google keeps about your search history. From the day you created your Google account, logged in, and used their search engine, Google has been logging the keywords you search for as well as the items within the search results that you have clicked. For example, mine has been logging my search activity for the last five years with this level of detail!
Google stores all of your search history, which you can view from oldest to newest, and filter it down to web, images, news, products, video, and so on. You can also see trends for the last 7 days, 30 days, year, or all time broken into top queries, top sites, and top clicks as well as some graphs for monthly, daily, and hourly search activity.
If you don’t mind Google keeping these kind of tabs on you, and you are the only one who accesses your Google account, this may not be such a big deal. But if you share a Google account with someone else (or someone at least knows your password), then they can login into the account and see what anyone has been searching while logged in.
Clearing Web History
While most people have figured out how to turn off Personalized Search, it’s easy to forget to clear what data Google has captured from you thus far. Here is how to clear your web history – this process should work in classic Google and the beta.
1. Log into your Google Account.
2. Do a search for anything.
3. Click on the “Web History” option in the top right.
4. Under “All History” select “Remove items.”
5. Click on “Clear entire Web History.”
6. Confirm by entering your password (if required) and clicking the “Clear History” button.
Now, Google will no longer have or continue to collect your search data and other information. I take that back, they are probably still collecting it somewhere, but neither you nor anyone else who logs into your account can view it. You can resume to have Google collect your search data, if you choose, by entering your Web History settings at any time.
