Google search history is useful if you often return to things you've searched for before. But you may want to delete your search history if you're concerned about privacy and don't want your sensitive information stored on Google's servers.
Once you clear your history on Google and in your browser, all search results records will disappear without a trace and can no longer be linked to you. This article will tell you how to do this. This includes both the search history associated with your account and the browser history.
Removing from Google account
By default, the service tracks all requests you make after signing in to Google from any device. If you are not signed in to your Google account, skip to the section that describes how to delete your browser history.
To clear recent search results manually, simply click on the search bar on google.com and click the Remove button next to each item you want to remove.
This method is suitable if you want to delete a few recent searches, but it is too labor-intensive to delete all entries. To clear the entire history, click on the icon in the upper right corner of the search window, select the desired profile and click "Manage your Google account»).
In the window that opens, select "Data and personalization". In the "Tracking activities" section, go to the "Web and app activity" sub-item. Go to "Manage history" and you will see a list of your recent actions that were performed using Google services.
If you want to delete a specific category, it makes sense to use the "Filter by date and product" option. Now you can clear search data for a specific date or set up (a little lower) automatic deletion of history in applications and web searches.
We prohibit saving history
To stop Google from recording your activity, turn off the switch on the Activity Tracking settings page next to Web & App Activity. From that point on, your search queries and data from other Google services will no longer be saved.
If you often need to delete recent search results, using this switch will save you a lot of time.
Delete your browser search history
Surely you know that browsers also record data about every page you visit on the Internet. The next thing you need to do to maintain privacy is to clear this database as well.
We'll show you how to do this in the Chrome browser. Open the three-dot menu in the upper-right corner of the screen and select "History" to open the settings page. You can also do this with a keyboard shortcut Ctrl+H.
In the window that opens, check the items you want to delete. Once you have selected all the items you want from the list, click "Delete" at the top of the page. If the items you want are scattered throughout your history, you can simplify the task by filtering through the search bar at the top of the screen. To delete Google queries, enter google.com in the bar.
It will be much faster to delete all entries using the built-in tool "Clear history" (on the left side of the page). The tool can also be called from any other page of the browser by simultaneously pressing a combination of keys Ctrl+Shift+Del.
The window that appears has two tabs: basic settings and additional. The tool allows you to delete not only history, but also cookies and browser cache. Using the drop-down list of the "Time range" item, you can specify the period of data for which you want to delete history. After setting the cleaning parameters, click the "Delete data" button. That's all that is required of you.
Using incognito mode
As we have seen, deleting your search history is not difficult, but you probably don’t want to do this procedure all the time. To finally put an end to the need to regularly clear information about visited sites, you can use private mode (or incognito). In this mode, the browser does not make any entries in the history at all.
In Chrome, open the menu in the top-right corner and select New incognito window (or click Ctrl+Shift+N).
When surfing with a private window, the browser does not record anything. And since you are not logged into any account when working in this mode, you can safely use the search engine.
Of course, there is no talk of any “complete invisibility” in private surfing. Web pages continue to track your actions and have access to your location data. But if you just need to avoid the appearance of several entries in the history of the Google service and browser, the option is well suited for this.
Searching for private information in DuckDuckGo
If you don't want to use incognito mode all the time and don't like Google recording your every move, you can switch to an alternative search engine.
DuckDuckGo is loved for its reverent attitude to user privacy. This service does not track your actions, but at the same time it has quite high-quality search results.
Of course, you don't have to use DuckDuckGo all the time, but it can be very convenient at times. Especially if you don't want Google to record private information, such as searching for information on treating a disease you have.