Your data on Google
Google Accounts & Web History
When you create a Google Account, Web History is automatically turned on.
Lots of people find things on the web that they really like – a funny video, a great recipe for chocolate cake, a newspaper article – but then lose them. Web History enables you to view and search across webpages you’ve visited in the past, including Google searches, so that you can find that great content again quickly and easily. It also shows you trends on your web activity, such as your most visited sites and top searches.
Using Web History also means that you will get more personalized search results:
- Signed-in personalization:
- When you’re signed in to a Google Account with Web History, Google personalizes your search experience based on what you’ve searched for and which sites you’ve visited in the past.
- Signed-out personalization:
- When you’re not signed in, Google customizes your search experience based on past search information linked to your browser, using a cookie. Google stores up to 180 days of signed-out search activity linked to your browser’s cookie, including queries and results you click.
Your web history is stored on Google servers, so you can view and manage it from any computer by signing into your Google Account. We store information related to the pages you visit, such as the URL, but don’t store a snapshot of the page itself in your account.
You can choose to stop storing your web activity in Web History either temporarily or permanently, or remove items at any time.
It’s good to know how search results are personalized when you use Web History with a Google Account. Read the next topic: How Google uses location information