My Search History (Beta)

Remember what you saw on Google, no matter where you are

[vitaplease]

[google.com...]

My Search History lets you easily view and manage your search history from any computer. This feature of Google web search enables you to find information you thought you lost. And over time, you'll see an increasing number of relevance indicators in your search results that help you find the information you want

tip from [battellemedia.com...]

and more from Reuters: [reuters.com...]

[Shak]

nice

;)

Shak

[GoogleGuy]

I'm glad that we're offering this. I really liked seeing the things that Ask Jeeves and A9 did in this space, for example. There's a whole FAQ that people can read if they want to sign up for this service: [google.com...]

I registered a little while ago for this when they were doing internal testing. Not surprisingly, when I look at my search history, I seem to be doing a lot of spammy queries. :)

[Scoreboard]

I like it. Anything that refines search is generally a good thing. The tin foil hat and black helicopters crowd probably won't be embracing it anytime soon, though.

[GoogleGuy]

That's probably right, Scoreboard. But hopefully the tin foil hat crowd is already blocking cookies, searching through proxies, or doing whatever else they need to do so that they are happy and can still search. :)

[Chndru]

Pretty basic, but a great start!

Good one, G.

[BigDave]

I seem to be doing a lot of spammy queries.

If Google's goal is to provide the searcher with what they want . . .

and . . .

Google's goal is to return non-spammy results . . .

and . . .

you are looking for spammy results . . .

Doesn't that mean that Google fails no matter what?

[GoogleGuy]

I check out all the weird corner cases that people send me, BigDave. I didn't mean that my results were spammy. I meant that my actual queries were spammy, as in the sort of queries you would do if you were looking for spam. :)

added: Ah, I missed the syllogism. :) There are two failure modes. I prefer the failure mode where I don't uncover spam when I look for it. :)

[claus]

uhm... you should try to make the time out for the confirmation email a little longer. I've tried four times to get a Google account by now but i never manage to hit that confirmation link in time, as the account i signed up with has delays in mail reception. Too much tin foil around the mail servers, or whatever *lol*

Added: I was a bit distracted when i posted this: I forgot to say that this looks like a very useful thing - if one remembers to login :)

[BigDave]

I prefer the failure mode where I don't uncover spam when I look for it.

I was guessing that was the one that you would prefer. It just struck me as funny when I read it.

I'd still complain about it to someone on the search team that gets a little too intense sometimes. I'm sure you have at least one of those.

As a part time tin foil hat wearer, I'll play with the Search History on one of my browsers and keep it turned off on others. Hell, Google can already keep records on all my searches, this only gives me access to those records.

[nileshkurhade]

GoogleGuy,

Please make sure you add an option to delete a keywords, that we searched in the past.

Regards
NILESH

Added - Sorry about that its already there ....

[edited by: nileshkurhade at 9:15 pm (utc) on April 20, 2005]

[GoogleGuy]

I will most certainly pass that feedback on claus. No point offering a new service if people can't sign up for it.. :)

[GoogleGuy]

No worries, nileshkurhade. From the FAQ:

Whenever you're browsing your search history page, you can click the "Remove items" link in the upper-right corner. You'll then be in edit mode and can remove any items you don't want included in My Search History by checking items and clicking the "Remove" button.

We figured people would want to be able to edit their list of searches. I believe there's also a "Pause" button which will suspend your history until you explicitly un-pause it.

[nileshkurhade]

GoogleGuy,

No complaints, certainly a Value Added Feature.

Rgds
NILESH

[reseller]

Ooooops

While I am in My Search History I have tried running
site:www.mysite.dk

I was sent to the regular Google and my email was not at top anymore.

Why is that happening?

[steveb]

"This feature of Google web search enables you to find information you thought you lost"

Too bad they don't mean my hijacked website......

[reseller]

steveb

<"This feature of Google web search enables you to find information you thought you lost"

Too bad they don't mean my hijacked website......>

Well I was searching for my lost 75% Google traffic :-)

[steveb]

Interesting little tool though.

GG, I can't help but think that you'll get looney spammers clicking their own links like mad, after reading the patent. I assume this data will be used by search; I'm assuming spammers will start clicking like mad; I'm assuming there are methods in place to weight the clcik info so as to exclude "search history click fraud" (TM steveb 2005)... seems like this could be a major, complex issue.

[GoogleGuy]

steveb, I think this is intended much more to help users than for search quality. So I'm not that worried about people trashing their search histories in various weird/arbitrary ways. :)

[steveb]

Doesn't work using the "ie" results format.

Searched that way, and it didn't store what I clicked.

[Scarecrow]

We figured people would want to be able to edit their list of searches. I believe there's also a "Pause" button which will suspend your history until you explicitly un-pause it.

GoogleGuy, I believe you are adding to the clever obfuscation that's already in the FAQ:

[google.com...] :

"You can choose to stop storing your searches in My Search History either temporarily or permanently, or remove items, as described in My Search History Help. However, as is common practice in the industry, Google maintains a separate logs system for auditing purposes and to help us improve the quality of our services for users. For example, we use this information to audit our ads systems, understand which features are most popular to users, improve the quality of our search results, and help us combat vulnerabilities such as denial of service attacks."

Sounds okay on first reading, but the second time through I read this as saying that I can turn on or off the My Search History, and I can edit it all I want for my own viewing pleasure, but you keep it all anyway, just as you've been tracking my search terms with your cookie for at least five years now, so there!

How else am I supposed to read your FAQ? Other than giving you a name to go along with your immortal cookie with its globally-unique ID, why would I want to use this thing? I can save links with copy-and-paste into another file, and the privacy I get from doing things that way -- along with deleting your cookie frequently -- is worth many times more than getting all this history stuck forever and ever, personally identifiable and uneraseable, on your servers.

[pleeker]

Searched that way, and it didn't store what I clicked.

It's not storing my searches, either. I thought maybe I needed to logout and back in, but no. Thought I'd see my earlier searches if I waited an hour or so. Nope. Not saving anything.... I'm the Invisible Searcher. :)

[graywolf]

Good thing that patent that came out a few weeks ago wasn't true, or else I might be a little worried they were implementing new ways of collecting more and more data about users searching and browsing habits like they mentioned in sections 34-37, 46, 47, 94, 114, and 115 ;-)

[BigDave]

Other than giving you a name to go along with your immortal cookie with its globally-unique ID, why would I want to use this thing?

Well, from reading the rest of your post, you obviously don't want to use it. Rather than tell you why I think you should use it, I would suggest that you simply don't use it.

Yahoo has offered me the ability to have portable bookmarks in My Yahoo that goes along with my old yahoo account. I rarely use it, but there have been times when it has been incredibly useful. And, yeah, Yahoo! is able to see what I have stored there. What is the big deal?

You care about your privacy? Then simply don't use a service that acknowledges that it goes beyond what you consider to be your acceptable limits.

If I was looking for information on anything that Diane Feinstein thinks should be banned from the internet, I would be careful. But when I'm trying to find that search that had a result that listed where I could find parts for a 1930s Enterprise Diesel, I would love this feature.

[Scoreboard]

This is now the top story on Drudge Report.

[icedout]

This is now the top story on Drudge Report.

Yeah, this may turn into a big "privacy" issue.

[jcoronella]

I don't see how this could be a privacy issue. Yahoo tracks my email in Y! mail. They keep every letter that I send and receive, yet it is hardly a privacy invasion.

[bears5122]

Hasn't Ask Jeeves been doing this already? Sounds like another stolen idea that gets Google a lot of publicity.

[walkman]

"We will not disclose this information to other companies or individuals, except in the limited circumstances "

call me whatever name you choose but this STINKS. I don't want no company to store for years what I search online...and don't start with "well, if you have nothing to hide" nonsense. That's not the point. If Google has it, all it takes is a judge and a warrant and everything you searched is shown to the government. Good luck trying to explain context to a jury made of 65+ year old people why you searched for anthrax, lie detectors, or porn 5 years ago. Were you just searching for something you didn't understand fron an article you were reading, or we you planning X crime? I'll pass. This is beyond scary. Even worse than On Star.

Google should stop playing that we "we do no evil" BS, they're becoming worse than Microsoft.

[walkman]

"I don't see how this could be a privacy issue. Yahoo tracks my email in Y! mail. They keep every letter that I send and receive, yet it is hardly a privacy invasion."
does Y! keep your email years after you delete it?