You may want to delete Google Search History after browsing the web on a public computer. Learn how to delete your entire Google Search history permanently with this simple tutorial.
While you are browsing web, third party software like web browsers and toolbars spy on your browsing habits and collect data which helps them in improving their performance. This data mainly includes Browsing history, search history, cookies, passwords, download history.
If you don’t like sharing the details of sites you have visited or the things that you have searched in Google, you can easily delete search and browsing history from your PC.
Generally there are four possible locations where your Google search history may be saved. These are
- Browser itself
- Google Toolbar
- Google Web History (If signed into your Google account)
- Google Desktop Search
Now let’s take a look at immediate and permanent fixes for each of these one by one.
Deleting Search History Stored in Web Browsers
Browsers capture every bit of your activity on the web. Fortunately these are so easily customizable that you can erase most of your online activity from their memory. The process of deleting search history in all the major browsers is fundamentally the same and there are only minor changes from one browser to other. Here is a step by step guide.
Firefox
Immediate Fix
Click on Tools > Clear Private Data.
Check “Saved Form and Search History” and click “Clear Private Data Now”
You can also delete other stuff that Firefox stores like Cookies, Offline Website data and Download History.
Permanent Fix
Click on Tools > Options > Privacy.
Uncheck “Remember what I enter in forms and search bar”
Click on “Ok” to save.
From now on Firefox will not save your search history.
Internet Explorer
Immediate Fix
Click on Tools > Delete Browsing History
Check the box against “Form Data” and click delete.
Google Chrome
Click on Tools Icon on top right corner in Chrome
Now click “Clear Browsing History” and select Browsing History
How to Delete Google Toolbar Search History
For your convenience Google toolbar stores search history in its memory. You can erase or pause this search history at your discretion.
Immediate Fix:
Deleting search history from is pretty easy. Click on the down arrow as shown in the image and then click on Clear Search History
Permanent Fix
Right Click anywhere on the Google toolbar and click on “options”.
In the Search Tab uncheck “Save search history on my computer”
From now on Google Toolbar will not save your search history.
Deleting Search History from your Google Account
Whenever you are surfing web while being logged into any of Google services, Google collects data in form of Web History. This web History helps it deliver more personalized search results based on the things you’ve searched for on Google and the sites you’ve visited. You might not notice a big impact on your search results early on, but they should steadily improve over time the more you use Web History. You may access and remove this data at any time.
Immediate Fix
Login into any of your Google history here and click on “delete entire web history” and confirm
Permanent Fix
After deleting your web history click on Pause to stop Google from storing your browsing habits any further.
Clear Search History from Google Desktop Search
Right click on Google desktop icon in the task bar and select Desktop Search. Now click on Browse Timeline > Web History.
Now click on Remove events.
Select all and click remove.