If you use Google to search for anything while you are logged into your Google account, then Google records what you searched, when you searched and which websites (in the search results list) you clicked on. These records of your search items and visited sites helps Google to predict what you would be searching and so give you the related search results. Although, your web history is accessible only to you but this greatly affects the search results in Google and the advertisements displayed using Google Ad-Sense on various web sites.
If you are confusing Google web history with your web browser’s history, then you are wrong. The web browser’s history is stored on your local hard disk which you can clear any time you want. Every web browser has a different way of getting rid of your web browser history including visited websites, cookies and cache etc. Infact, there are programs like CCleaner to help you clean the web browser history with the ease of a mouse click.
But the Google web history is different. It is stored on Google’s servers and is associated with your Google account. It cannot be cleaned using a third party software and only you (the Google account owner) can view or clear it, if you want to. Here is how you can clear your web history for your Google account :
- Open your web browser – it does not matter which browser – and visit https://www.google.com/history/
- Enter your Google account credentials and login to your Google account. You will be take to the Google web history page where you can view the web history related to your Google account.
As you can see, the web history shows when and what you searched, how much time you paused looking at the results and which websites you clicked from he results. You can choose to view the web history of any day from the green colored date picker on the right side.
- To clear your Google web history, click on the Remove items in the left side as shown.
- You can select which results you want to remove by checking the checkboxes against the results in the list. You can select all the items by clicking on the All link. If you want to unselect the selected items and start over, then you can click on the None link. After you have selected the items click on the Remove button to remove the selected items.
- If you want to clear whole of the web history associated with your Google account, then just click on the link Clear entire Web History as shown.
You will be asked for confirmation, whether you want the entire web history to be cleared. Click on the Clear History button as shown to go forth and clear the entire web history associated with your Google account.
- If you choose to clear the entire web history, Google thinks you do not really want it to collect the web history and pauses the Web History service. For Google to start recording your web history again, click on the Resume link on the left side as shown.
If you do not click on the Resume link as explained above, Google will no longer collect your Google account’s web history. If this is what you want, then do not click on the Resume link.
For more information about Google’s web history, you can visit their help web page at http://www.google.com/support/accounts/bin/topic.py?topic=14148.