
Check your Google history - algorithm_dk
https://history.google.com/history/lookup
======
nathanb
Am I the only one who finds this to be useful?

Having a searchable search history feels kinda meta, but this basically solves
the problem of "I know I found this webpage a while back but I can't find it
again". Ideally this sort of thing would be handled by the browser's history
feature and stored locally, but the browser can't (or at least doesn't)
correlate between "you searched for this term" and "you clicked this result".
I also find that the browser's history search leaves something to be desired,
and let's not increase Firefox's memory footprint even more by making it
better!

(Browser history is also stored online for most browsers these days, and
especially if you use Chrome then Google already have your history anyway).

~~~
JoshTriplett
> (Browser history is also stored online for most browsers these days, and
> especially if you use Chrome then Google already have your history anyway).

Chrome Sync supports optional client-side encryption, and Firefox Sync always
uses client-side encryption.

~~~
nathanb
Uh, so what are we afraid of here?

Do you honestly believe that if the NSA decided they wanted your browser
history, the encryption used by Chrome or Firefox would stymie them for too
long?

I guess I'm just not really clear on what folks are worried about happening
with these history data. Is the concern that the data could be leaked,
revealing potentially privacy-compromising information? Or that Google might
mine it in an attempt to make a buck off of your metadata? Or that the
government might use it to identify you as a potential political dissident?

Personally, I find the Google search history to be useful, though less useful
lately since DDG is my primary search engine now. I don't quite get the knee-
jerk "this is creepy" outrage and fear I see from some folks about this
feature.

~~~
nobodysfool
Being accused of a precrime is one thing to be concerned about. It's happened
to quite a few people. People who planned an event similar to "Improv
Everywhere" in London were captured and detained before they could do
something which was not even illegal... An Irish guy got questioned for a
solid 12 hours and sent home for an innocuous tweet. Another person was
detained and had his home trashed for quoting a movie on Facebook. This
happens all the time. Imagine if you are a writer for a mystery novel, you
want to do some research, and then someone close to you dies. Now your
research queries are going to be used to make you look guilty. Yeah, an
'innocent' man has nothing to fear from the law, except they do, as you can
clearly see if you ever have heard of
[http://www.innocenceproject.org/](http://www.innocenceproject.org/).

~~~
nathanb
This is certainly a concern. However, I believe that if the NSA or local law
enforcement have a way to mine your search history internal to Google, they
will not be stopped in this endeavor just because you told Google not to save
your search history. They can just gather the data in real time and maintain
their own history for you.

The solution to this is not to turn off Google's search history, but to use a
search engine (like DDG) who purportedly have security and anonymity built in.

------
ansimionescu
I'm not a privacy freak, but I still have Search and Youtube history turned
off. Why? Because the superficial kind of machine learning done by everyone
today (Google included) yields crap results.

Example: I'm subscribed to pewdiepie on Youtube (the other subscriptions being
mostly dev stuff). ALL the videos recommended now are garbage made for/by
mentally challenged 14 year olds. It was even worse when I had YT history on.
At least now I get somewhat relevant related videos (useful when learning
about a new technology, a startup, etc).

== Edit

You do realise that I'm subscribed to only 1 _shitty_ channel and 15+ _real_
ones? Actually, this might mean that Youtube's algorithms are skewed toward
popular stuff (there's no contest between pewds and Google Developers, lol).

~~~
izzydata
You subscribed to a mentally challenged 14 year old and you are questioning
why you get suggestions for videos by mentally challenged 14 year olds?

But seriously, it could probably be improved. Does anyone know if down voting
videos affects recommendations? I also wish I could explicitly ignore things
on the recommendations section before I watch them. Just out of principle I
don't want to give them a view and potentially ad money just so I can down
vote them.

~~~
ansimionescu
Obviously, pewdiepie isn't the epitome of intellectual achievement, but he's
not _that_ bad either. I like him because (i) he's Swedish and about my age
and (ii) his insane success is a very interesting and relatively new
phenomenon. Have a look at some stats, his subscribers and views skyrocketed
organically like nothing seen before.

~~~
izzydata
I'd rather not become part of the problem. Being popular for being popular in
my opinion is not something that holds much merit.

Watching other people play games in particular is really silly to me when I
can just play them myself. It's just one of those weird fads that isn't for
me.

~~~
ansimionescu
That's interesting, I'm actually the other way around. I see games as a work
of art instead of a pastime, so I enjoy watching people play rather than doing
it myself. It feels like I'm saving time this way. :) It might have something
to do with the fact that having a family has turned my interests system
around.

~~~
izzydata
Those things aren't mutually exclusive. A game can be a work of art and an
enjoyable pastime. In fact the idea of putting some unfunny weirdo's face and
voice over the game's story really destroys a lot of the artistic value.

------
a3_nm
You can get data about your Google queries from the Firefox history database
even when you are not using Google history, for instance using the following
(no guarantees on sanity/completeness, assumes you are on Unix with necessary
utilities installed, have only one profile folder, etc.):

    
    
      sqlite3 ~/.mozilla/firefox/*.default/places.sqlite 'select last_visit_date,url from moz_places;' |
      perl -pe 's/%([0-9a-f]{2})/sprintf("%s", pack("H2",$1))/eig' |
      grep -E 'google\.[a-z]{2,3}/search?' |
      sed 's/^\(.*\)|.*[?&]q=\([^&]*\)\(&.*\)\?/\1|\2/' |
      perl -pe 's/%([0-9a-f]{2})/sprintf("%s", pack("H2",$1))/eig' |
      tr '|+' '  ' | sort -k2,2 | uniq -f1 | sort -k1,1n

------
pepsi
And your location history - if you use Google Now, this is probably enabled.

[https://maps.google.com/locationhistory/b/0](https://maps.google.com/locationhistory/b/0)

~~~
pmorici
Argh! I knew about the search history and had it turned off but I did not know
about this location database. I recently got an Android phone and it must save
your location history because it is showing all my travel for the period I've
been using the phone. This is creepy as hell. This phone is going back.

~~~
jve
Android must have warned you before turning on Location services. Anyway, you
can turn this off in the settings.

~~~
pmorici
No, I don't think it did, or if it did it was in the fine print and I didn't
notice it.

~~~
dirkgently
I doubt Google wrote special code especially for you. It has _always_ been opt
in.

------
mgrouchy
Clicked on this and says I don't have it enabled. From the collected reactions
so far in here. I am expecting that is a good thing.

~~~
thearn4
Same. It looks like I must have stumbled on this awhile back, turned it off,
then forgot about it.

------
jebus989
I know we're meant to be freaked out by this but I think it would actually be
pretty cool to have data for tens of thousands of search results stretching
back a decade or so. With a bit of analysis you could get some cool insights
into past interests, their dynamics over time etc.

~~~
mischanix
Yes, to me, this and the location history are just plain awesome automatic
logging that I get for free. That said, it's only free to me because I already
value my privacy on the internet at $0.

I especially like having a graph that tells me I need to sleep more regularly
[1] and I also like having location history that tells me I'm a very boring
person in the real world (and that my phone's GPS is wildly inaccurate).

[1] [http://i.imgur.com/c6cUGrY.png](http://i.imgur.com/c6cUGrY.png)

~~~
JoshTriplett
> my privacy on the internet

Location history isn't "your privacy on the Internet", it's "your privacy".

~~~
mischanix
No, because I am aware that my phone connects to the internet. If I want to
exclude the internet from my whereabouts, I can just go without my phone.

------
danesparza
This is a pretty old function of Google (that predates Google+ by several
years). I'm surprised this is news.

~~~
gavinpc
If anyone around here doesn't already know about it, Google must want it to be
very out-of-the-way. I would love to see typical users' reactions to this
killer feature: it would be perfect for one of those hidden-camera, person-
off-the-street, "No way!" sort of ads.

I turned it off circa 2006 and I'm glad to see that it's still off.

------
mvanveen
There doesn't seem to be any way to export to a machine-readable format. Not
even the Google Data Liberation Front seems to be of any help :/

Feeling determined and stubborn, I even tried writing a quick CasperJS script
to scrape the page data but quickly ran into two-factor auth obstacles. Since
Google won't let you login with an application-specific password and doesn't
have any API endpoint which devs can hit to get this data, it makes things
rather tricky! Getting easy, downloadable access to this search history
directly from Google doesn't seem within the grasp of even a determined
developer at this point.

------
seky
Does turning it off just mean YOU wonn't me able see the recorded history? :-)

~~~
jacquesm
Indeed, that is exactly what it does.

------
Tenoke
An interesting piece of data they show is how often you click on Ads. I seem
to do it about once a week, which I did not expect, as in my mind I almost
never click on ads (although in a lot of those searches the Ad just leads to
the actual site I'm searching for).

What are your rates, and are they surprising?

~~~
maaaats
Looks like it's either lying, or I mistake ads as real results often.

~~~
GhotiFish
Challenge time!

Turn off any adblockers you have, and go to this website:
[http://www.imgburn.com/](http://www.imgburn.com/)

your mission is to successfully download the installer to imgburn.

 _good luck._

~~~
icebraining
Download → Mirror 7.

[http://www.commitstrip.com/en/2013/12/09/le-truc-quun-
codeur...](http://www.commitstrip.com/en/2013/12/09/le-truc-quun-codeur-sait-
reconnaitre-dinstinct/#post-6911)

------
HarrietJones
I'm not creeped out by it, but I can understand why other people may be. Total
searches: 68452

That is a lot of searches.

~~~
ch0wn
75105 and also not creeped out. Search results are a whole lot more relevant
for me when I'm logged in, especially when searching for dev-related topics
that oftentimes have very generic, real-world terms with specific meanings in
that context.

~~~
UweSchmidt
What kinds of dev-related topics though. Looking up basic language syntax over
and over? Fishing for copy&paste-ready code samples?

Or rather badass, sophisticated and cutting edge comp sci topics? Stuff that
could ... simplify the application process at any software company?

I'd bet some analysis could show common search patterns, or paths of
understanding that programmers go from noob to various levels of
enlightenment.

------
pwenzel
Kind of frustrated to see that Google's Search History feature was somehow re-
enabled years after I disabled it.

~~~
guiseroom
Mine too except I disabled it back in December.

------
romseb
To see so many people on here finding this a useful feature I wonder if there
are browser extensions which store the search history (independent of the
search provider) client-side.

I love how I can access years of search queries for words in other languages
in an extension like Instant Translate:
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/instant-
translate/...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/instant-
translate/ihmgiclibbndffejedjimfjmfoabpcke)

------
bowlofpetunias
No, I'm not creeped out by it. Largely of course because I have it turned off.

I am however shocked by the fact that so many people are okay with it being
legal for any company to collect such data from people we all know full well
do not understand the consequences. So called opt-in is by far not sufficient
permission for this. That should come with a signed contract that includes
penalty clauses that could in extremis bankrupt the company and jail it's
owners.

A contract that can only be signed by consenting adults. Google now stalks
your children and sells their data. Are you really okay with that?

It's ironic that it's called "history", because we obviously haven't learned
anything from it.

~~~
anigbrowl
eponysterical

------
recroad
I guarantee you that this feature will cause many people to get divorced.

------
LeoPanthera
You can also opt-out of ad profiling here:
[https://www.google.com/settings/u/0/ads](https://www.google.com/settings/u/0/ads)

------
Yuioup
Is there a way to select my entire history and delete it all?

[EDIT] Never mind I found it. It's under "Settings"

[EDIT EDIT] Thanks for migstopheles for the direct link.

~~~
laichzeit0
The question however is whether it's really deleted or just not being
displayed to you anymore. Only Google can answer that.

~~~
TheCraiggers
Well, if you're going to be that paranoid, there's no guarantee that they're
not still recording / saving all your searches after you disable saved
searches.

The point I'm trying to make is either you trust Google to abide by your
wishes and not save your search history, or you don't.

~~~
nyrina
I don't know about you, but the companies I've worked with don't delete
anything - no matter what.

~~~
TheCraiggers
Well, the ones I've worked for do.

It all boils down to risk. Yes, there is some data that companies are required
to keep for N years due to auditing, etc. That's unavoidable. But there comes
a point where keeping data (especially personal information that is usually
covered by numerous laws and 200-page policies from bodies such as the credit
card industry) becomes a liability. Companies typically don't like
liabilities, and therefor delete it.

Now, there are data that a company might consider keeping because the income
generated by keeping it outweighs the risk associated by mishandling it. And
you're right, there's no way of knowing what Google considers this to be. But
that was my original point- if you don't trust Google to delete your history
when you ask, then why do you trust them to not keep it in the first place
when you opt-out?

------
vxNsr
I have this and youtube history turned off because both use broken machine
learning to try to interest me in nonsense I don't care about each time I
search for something.

Example: Yea I clicked on the "Oprah gives a car to everyone" video, but right
now I'm trying to watch videos relevant to PHP security, and I don't care to
see talkshow outtakes in the "related" sidebar.

------
matthuggins
This is news? Isn't this about a decade old now?

------
wildpeaks
My #1 request with Chrome would be if it could sort the history by _" last
seen/interacted with"_, not by last opened tab because it would be more
accurate when I'm trying to retrace my steps e.g. _" I know I was just reading
X page 10 minutes ago, but that was a page I opened two hours ago, so it's way
way down in the history"_.

------
scrabble
Mine is almost empty, and the stuff in there is just about all dev stuff.

Switching to DDG really took care of this particular problem.

------
jonalmeida
Like dansparza mentioned, this isn't new. If you want to avoid having your
searches logged specifically on your google account you could always use an
incognito/private session. (Yes, it doesn't stop you from being tracked
entirely, but it does limit the effect.)

Also, DDG has severely decreased my search activity.

------
id
It surprises me how many people have a google account with their real name and
always keep logged in.

~~~
lucaspiller
Why? The NSA already know everything I'm doing, using a fake name and logging
out isn't going to do much to stop that.

~~~
id
You're probably not a target and Google is not the NSA. I don't think
capitulating and voluntarily giving them your data helps.

~~~
icebraining
If you don't want to give them your data, you mustn't use Google. Logging out
is nothing more than a placebo.

~~~
id
Not using Google is probably the best solution. If you still have to use it
for whatever reason, don't give them all your data. The only thing you really
have to give them is your search term.

~~~
icebraining
Lack of data is also data. How many people do you think send absolutely empty
requests? It probably makes you extremely unique.

------
6thSigma
I turned this off years ago when it first came out. I have no idea if turning
this off is a false sense of privacy or not.

Either way, I turned it back on recently. There are a few things Google
requires this feature on such as keeping a history on the Google Maps app for
Android.

------
mpnordland
I'd forgotten about this. I keep thinking about deleting my google account but
I have so many accounts linked to it. I host my own email, but I haven't taken
the plunge of hooking everything up with that because of what happened with
@n.

------
jacquesm
Note that turning off your google history does absolutely nothing on googles
side besides flipping one bit which stops you from having access to the data
too. They're still collecting all your searches and associating them with you.

------
icpmacdo
I would have thought I had more than 11K searches. How many searches did you
guys have?

~~~
danesparza
Total searches: 60382

------
pbreit
I was pleased to see that it's password protected even though I know I was
already logged in to "google". Does anyone know what the specific
authentication rules are? I'm hoping my History session expires quickly.

------
wsinks
I really wish there was a way to see which devices searched for each one. I
found one or two entries that I don't remember.

Who is Maurice Frazier? I don't know, but I searched for him today. Time to
change the password...

------
canvia
I wonder if a competing search engine would be willing to buy your search
loyalty based on your past search volume. It seems like your value as a
customer would be pretty easy to calculate with this data.

------
dalek2point3
No thanks. This is what it looks like if you have web history turned off.

[http://imgur.com/wgF7Q5J](http://imgur.com/wgF7Q5J)

I've had web history turned off for a while now.

------
speedylocs
How is it possible that I only have searches from May (~500). I'm confident
I've always been logged in to my google account, though I only re-enabled G+
recently...

------
kull
Tell me your Top Sites and I will tell you who you are.

My Top sites: 1\. www.google.com 2\. stackoverflow.com 3\. wordpress.org 4\.
en.wikipedia.org 5\. maps.google.com

------
Istof
I turned my history off so that I (or someone else) can't see what Google
knows about my browsing history (I'm sure Google keep a copy).

------
arck
Thats useful as well as harmful! If I delete my browsing history from google
search and chrome, does Google still backup these deleted history?

------
_navaneethan
I find it is very useful only.But i am wondering how it captures the search in
github and searching in other sites?

It is kinda bookmarks simplified

------
ratsbane
Is there a way to download the entire history?

------
diimdeep
Total Google searches: 63500

I wish there is good api to scrape search hist for analysis..

------
phkahler
All I get from following the links in the comments is a blue button to turn ON
some google feature. Have I avoided opting IN to something nasty thus far?

------
joeyspn
"Turn your history on"

Me: No thanks, I disabled it long ago although we all know Google prob logs
all of your IP activity (ad targeting and stuff)

------
SilasX
"Today we reveal our latest feature, where you can get advance notice of how
we'll blackmail you!"

------
borkabrak
Wow, I use Google like, a lot.

------
harmonicon
Turned it off years ago. Thank goodness.

~~~
abstrct
I had turned it off on my account as well, which is what made seeing two years
of search history from myself so surprising. I assume when my account was +'d,
this setting was accidentally missed.

Moral of the story, just take a quick look anyways.

------
mantrax5
So I always tell my clients to not create new Google accounts just for their
site analytics, because Google tracks all kinds of shit in there.

But they don't get it. So when they inevitably give me that account, I go and
delete and disable the search history.

But let me tell you. To disable the search history I first need to open that
page, and I've seen a bunch of searches I honestly wish I wouldn't have.

~~~
hamburglar
Wait, you go and delete the search history from someone _else 's_ account? And
it's your client? Wow. And then you complain about what you see when you're in
there?

~~~
mantrax5
An account specifically created to host a site analytics group, and which
clients always accidentally remain logged into.

I think I'll get above your cheap outrage and say I did the right thing by
going in and disabling the search history.

~~~
hamburglar
I wouldn't go so far as to say outrage. Let's call it confusion. You advocate
deleting the history to your clients, they don't do it, so you go ahead and do
it anyway. And along the way, you get bothered by what you see when going into
the history pages. If I were in your situation, I'd figure that maybe the
client has an unstated reason for not wanting to delete the history and
consider it none of my business.

~~~
mantrax5
I don't advocate deleting the history of my clients, do you have problem with
reading comprehension?

The thing I "advocate" happens to be the best practice recommended by Google
(if you'd care to dig into the docs, and no one does) for sharing the
administration and viewing of Site Analytics groups (they're called Site
Analytics "accounts" which are _inside_ Google "accounts" so you can imagine
that many folks get confused over what is what).

The best practice is _not_ to create a new Google account and _not_ to share
that account's password with strangers (or even friends). There's a method for
sharing just analytics with other Google Accounts, buried in the Site
Analytics admin panel.

With that setup, the client will be creating a Site Analytics account within
his _personal_ Google account, and sharing said Site Analytics with _my_
personal account. And I won't be able to see, let alone delete or disable
their search history. Alas, that's not how things usually go.

People just don't get it, so they create new Google accounts over my head,
share it with everyone, and everyone's search history ends up in the shared
accounts. So when that accounts gets to me, I delete & disable search history.
I know _for a fact_ no one who ever logged into this shared account intended
to share their browsing history with people.

Exacerbating the problem is the fact Google accounts are intentionally
designed so that you log in and forget you're logged in. Google _wants_ to
know who you are. The accounts are also designed so that if you want a
standalone account for analytics, it's a full-blown Google account, so you end
up with people's search history in there (and a bunch of other services no one
asked about, like email, docs etc.). And people don't understand the
implications of sharing a Google account they've been logged into.

By the way, thanks for twisting my words and intent out of shape like you did.
Now that I've had to waste the time to explain my original post as if to an
imbecile, I'm sure everyone reading this will gain clarity about the situation
I was describing. Cheers.

~~~
hamburglar
Your reasoning for not wanting the history saved makes perfect sense. It's
making that decision for someone else's account that I don't really
understand. Oh well, I guess we disagree, and you have the comfort of not
being an imbecile. Cheers.

------
BaconJuice
Yep, this is scary as hell.

EDIT. How Badly would deleting all my history effect my google searches?

~~~
djanogo
I disabled history the first time I saw the option to turn it off (more than
few years back), I never had problem finding what I am looking for.

I am sure everybody here knows that this only means that Google apps don't use
your history, but it's still saved.

------
JacksonGariety
Naturally, you can only remove 26 items at a time. Makes perfect sense.

~~~
mikerice
You can actually delete it all on the settings page, as well as turning off
your history.

[https://history.google.com/history/settings?hl=en](https://history.google.com/history/settings?hl=en)

------
thegeomaster
I remember finding this and disabling it a long time ago. Thought I'd regret
it later when I realize I don't have a lengthy log of my history with Google,
but actually the feeling of not being creeped out is great.

~~~
doxcf434
Same here, I disabled it, but they turned it back on apparently.

------
sergiotapia
Thanks, just disabled this crap and deleted everything associated to my search
history. This is beyond creepy and I just don't like. I've switched entirely
to Firefox/DuckDuckgo since version 29 fixed it's developer tools and I won't
switch back to the monolith that is Google.

It's funny, but I trust Microsoft entirely more than Google.

~~~
flurpitude
I am unconvinced that turning off search history and deleting existing history
really does that.

