April 26, 2006
Google Search History
I've known for some time that Google have been recording my search history on those occasions when I have been googling whilst logged in to GMail, and it hasn't really bothered me too much on privacy grounds (there's going to be some paypff for me in usability terms, right?)...
... and I wasn't that bothered when I read this post: How Much Do You Google? in which Joe Schmidt commented on how he'd made 6357 searches over the last year (more than 17 a day...).
But I have to admit, when I saw my own results at http://www.google.com/searchhistory:
I got a bit twitchy... Seeing this record of the "negative searches" I'd made, as well as the links I'd clicked through, seemed potentially to be a bit too revealing...
(I use Google far more than the search results would imply - a lot of the time I am not logged in to my Google account...)
There are a couple of payoffs, of course. Firstly, you can get an RSS feed of this information:
1. Add a new feed with https://www.google.com/searchhistory/?output=rss� as the URL. 2. Since this is a secure feed, find the option to enter a username and password, then enter your Google Account username and password.Ref: Google Help Center
Secondly, there's the option to search your history.
If you find the results are skewed byu links you followed but discounted, it's always possible to remove them:
After clicking on the "Search History" link at the top of the Google homepage, click Remove items. You'll then be in edit mode and can remove any items you don't want by checking those items and clicking the "Remove" button. There's also a link to clear your entire Search History
I suspect this is all a move towards an even richer Personal Search option which mixes results from clicked through links made on your own searches with bookmarked links (yes - Google does have a bookmarking serivce now, where else but at http://www.google.com/bookmarks):
Note here the option to Search Bookmarks rather than Search History.
What I haven't seen yet (I don't think) is a Personal Search that combines results from these two services.
Certainly, the provision of the Add Bookmark bookmarklet at the bottom of the personal (history) search page is anything to go by, these two services would both seem as if they will be lumped together.
Posted by ajh59 at April 26, 2006 09:03 PM