Exploring and erasing your Google search history

Molly Wood, of the New York Times, talking about your search history:

YOUR search history contains some of the most personal information you will ever reveal online: your health, mental state, interests, travel locations, fears and shopping habits.

And that is information most people would want to keep private. Unfortunately, your web searches are carefully tracked and saved in databases, where the information can be used for almost anything, including highly targeted advertising and price discrimination based on your data profile.

She suggests that you visit this page to visit your history and, if you choose, erase it.

Google makes it easy to find your personal web history, manage it and even delete it. Just go to http://google.com/history and log in to your Google account. There, you will see your entire history and can browse it by category. For example, in the last month, I’ve done image searches for Gal Gadot (who will play the new Wonder Woman), “pointy nail trend” and “Wayne Rooney hair transplant,” plus a few more intelligent things, I’m sure.

Trouble is, many Google account users might not have access to their Google search history. Go ahead and click the link. If your history comes up, no need to keep reading. But if you get a message that says, “We are sorry, but you do not have access to this service”, read on.

Turns out that Google has a setting that enables web history. If you use Google Accounts to enable your own Google-backed domain, history is likely to be disabled for everyone in your domain. If you want to enable your search history, take a read through this support page for some suggestions on ways to enable your Google history. This particular post worked for me. It’s a little tricky and depends on your setup.

My guess is, Apple would not do things this way.