Your Google Search History — The Fun and Creepy Truth

Last spring, Google made our entire search histories available for download and viewing. If you're a regular Google search user, there is an incredibly detailed daily diary of your life and interests just waiting for you to look at it. What were you doing at 1:35 p.m. on October 15, 2012? If you dare, you can find out.

The Fun and (Slightly) Creepy Truth

Your Google account tracks your search activity across browsers and devices when you're logged in.

Because I like to use anonymous non-tracking browsers like Duck Duck Go or StartPage, my Google search history is spotty, but I was surprised at how much I use it anyway. On the days I did use it, my history revealed where I was and what I was doing and thinking online throughout each day.

There it was — to the minute. It showed me the specific article I was working on and my labored progress through it, the images I looked for to go in the article, and the things that distracted me along the way. I could actually gauge how interested I was in the topic by the number of distractions. Creepy.

I like CNBC data journalist Mark Fahey's account of his experience. He was fascinated with his online patterns like times of day he is active on the Internet, the appallingly vast number of searches he has done, the things he searches for most, and the sites he visits most frequently, and perhaps most frightening, the increasing amount of time he has been plugged in each year. Here's his summation:

"Google knows a lot about our lives before even taking a look at the content of the searches. On an hourly basis, a person's search history gives a pretty clear picture of his or her daily routine over several years."

Steps to View Your Google Search History

There are a few different ways to view or download your Google search history, but viewing it online directly in your Google account is the easiest to understand.

1. Open google.com/history in your browser. Put in your password, if you're not already logged in to your Google account.

2. The page opens up reveal your recent searches for each day.

• You can see your searches for any day in the past by clicking on the little calendar icon at the top right of the screen, then choosing a date. If you get a blank page of results, the calendar is up at the top right of every page so you can look at another date.
• You can also click on the little spyglass icon in the upper right of the page to search your history by keyword.

That's it.

Steps to Download Your Google Search History

You can also download your history and have it sent to your Gmail account. Downloading your Google search history might be a little disappointing, though. You'll get a plain text document that has arcane coded entries like: "[{"timestamp_usec":"1443496165868661"}], "query_text":"zzxz nbvcΩ}}.

If you'd like to try that anyway,

1. Open google.com/history in your browser.

2. Once you're there and signed in to your account, click on the settings icon (three vertical dots) in the upper right corner and select Download. In the next window, below the security recommendations, click on Create Archive.

3. Next open up your Gmail. In mine, the title of the email was "Your archive of past Google searches is ready." I then clicked on View in Drive.

4. In the Google Drive window that opens up, click on the down arrow icon at the top to download it to your computer or mobile phone.

Google Terms of Service

Just so you know, here is what the Google Terms of Service says Google can do with your search data. "When you upload, submit, store, send or receive content to or through our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content. The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting, and improving our Services, and to develop new ones. This license continues even if you stop using our Services … ."

Steps to Delete Your Google Search History

If you find the amount of information that Google knows about you to be far too comprehensive for your comfort and privacy, take heart. You can delete it. Here's how.

1. Open google.com/history in your browser.

2. Once you're there and signed in to your account, click on the settings icon (three vertical dots) in the upper right corner and select Delete Options.

3. In the next window, click on Advanced and then click on the little arrow next to Select Date, then choose All Time, then click on Delete. That's it.

Here's the tricky part; Google doesn't actually delete your data from its servers. It keeps the data and makes it anonymous. Your search history is there, but no longer associated with your Google Account.

The downside of deleting your Google search history is that it will degrade Google's search results for you going forward. Google no longer has any information on what searches have worked well for you. So it will be unable to deliver tailored or enhanced search results and analytics.

It's a choice between privacy and a decent user experience. Your choice, and we thank Google for the chance to make it.

Image: David Woo / CC BY-ND

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