Deleting your web history and deleting Google search history; are they the same? The following article will brief you with this information.
A user may want to learn how to delete their search history for a variety of reasons. Google search history means all the search pages of Google that are generated, once you type a particular query on the search box. There are various methodologies to undertake this task.
Google’s web history can only be kept by Google, if you are using the Google toolbar, and you are logged into it. It does not store everything like the secured sites (those starting with https). However, if you are logged in; you have selected the options, enabled the Page Info, and Page Rank options, chances are that Google will record your search history, but just the urls for your particular account, and with a time and date stamp. This is however a utility provided so that you can check the searched pages at a later point of time.
How to Delete Google Web History from Your Account?
Firstly, go to the search engine homepage and click on the Sign in option at the upper right hand corner of the home page. Sign into your account, and click the My Account link. Now, go to the Edit link, and click on ‘Delete Web History’. A warning will be displayed. Click on “Yes, I want to permanently remove Web history from my Google account”, enter your current password, and then click “remove web history”. You need to type www.google.com in the search history of different browsers, and use their results to delete the search history.
Clearing History from Google Toolbar
Suppose you type something in the toolbar. Chances are that the next time you click the down arrow adjacent to the toolbar, your previous searches will be visible. To delete this, you can follow the following steps. Just click on the down arrow adjacent to the search box in the toolbar, and select “clear history”.
Deleting Google Search History in Different Browsers
Firefox
In Firefox version 2 or 3, you can simply go to Tools > Clear Private Data and select Saved Form and Search History. Then click ‘Clear Private Data Now’. For later versions like Firefox 3.5.8, you can go to Tools > Options > Privacy, and click on the link that says, “click your recent history”.
Internet Explorer
In Internet Explorer 7, you can go to Tools and select “Delete Browsing History”, and click Delete Forms. On this confirmation window, click Yes. In Internet Explorer 6, you can go to Tools menu and select Internet Options. Then select the Content tab, and click AutoComplete button. Then, click Clear Forms button to delete the search history.
Safari
Go to the Safari menu and select Preferences > Autofill. Then click on the edit button, and select the url of the home page of Google from the list. Then click Remove > Done.
Google Chrome
In this browser, you can delete the search history and the browsing history, by going to Tools menu and selecting history. You can select the option deciding the time period, for which you want the history to be deleted.
There may be an instance, when you do not want anything to be stored in your history. In such cases, you can try out the following ways.
- In Firefox, you can go to Tools > Options. Select the Privacy tab. Here, you get the options for Firefox- whether to remember your history or not.
- In Internet Explorer, you can go to Tools > Internet Options, and under the general tab, select the option to “delete browsing history on exit”.
One thing that needs to be mentioned is that Google’s search engine uses a system called Google Suggest. This is a way for helping the user. When you type a word or a letter, the most searched results are displayed in a drop down format below the dialog box. If you continue typing, the suggestions may change, and you can select any of them. However, it has nothing to do with your search history. Because of Google suggest, in fact, you need not worry, that your previous search will be displayed in the drop down format in the Google Search Box.