What do you think of Google's new My Search History feature?

I think its creepy.

It rocks. I think the biggest use i'll get out of it is that i can go back days later and find the same page i had before even if i dont remember my exact search terms.

i think it will help everyone be a better person and solve global hunger, war and poverty.

rock on google.

It's awesome, I hope Google keeps coming up with excellent interfaces like this.

Good idea, and looks useful. Personally, I'd rather be forced to click "save this search" or "save this link" or somesuch. That way, when I'm showing my mom something on my computer, my porn-searching history doesn't pop up.

Love it!

I think this is outside of googles realm. We want to know all the sites we've visited. Not just the ones we got to through google.
pah!

GoogleGuy's right. This is nice functionality, but wouldn't it be better to have a nicer "history" function in our browsers? Google's can be accessed from anywhere, of course, unlike a browser's "history."

Google Guy may be right, but if you look at it from Google's viewpoint, "if you went there it was through google". In some ways I'm concerned with their ability to collect and use information. Then again, the more time goes by, and the more I use Google services the more I trust them. Everything I've seen shouts "they are serious when they claim they'll do no evil". Who knows, I just know that my email address there is the only one I seem to give out any more, I don't bother using POP to download stuff from there because I've come to trust them. Maybe I'm naive, maybe just stupid, maybe I've come to the realization that you have to trust someone and Google has done more to show they are worthy of that trust than institutions such as the US government (or any other government).

-michael

Form Google's point of view I would think this would allow them to tailor search results to a user's intersts [hopefully as a user-selectable option] and also to tailor adwords presentations to a user's interests.

i.e. show windsurfing ads to people who search for windsurfing

I really like this service. I thought it would be interesting to have my recent search history in the form of an RSS feed, so I did just that and made a script to handle it. For all those that are interested, you can take a look at the code here: http://ejohn.org/projects/ghistory/

Where is the "Clear history" button?

if you go to my account in the top right, then in the bottom left you can "Delete My Search History"

Martin, you can click on "My Search History", then on "Remove Items", then on "Select: All", and then on "Remove"... and this should clear the history.

John Resig: I was wondering how fast people would come up with their own add-ons. So I guess the answer is: below 24 hours :)

David: More ads must be somewhere in the mix soon...

Stop monitoring me.

Nice feature but what disturbs me a little is that even I have paused my search history I'm redirected trough a google redirect page. Why is this necessary?

After I've signed out the redirect page has gone so maybe that's just a little bug in Beta which they resolve sooner or later.

Google tracks every results link you click anyway, so whether it's done via a redirect or not, they know what you've been clicking regardless of whether you're using this new feature.

This is usually done via a client-side JavaScript "clk" function in the onmousedown event of the results links, although I've noticed an actual redirect page being used on the Google UK site on several occassions (which they seem to turn on and off at random times).

Interesting comment from the Slashdot thread:

"So you can search for previous searches, but does it keep a history of your searches for previous searches? Can you search for previous searches for previous searches?"

I see a serious flaw in Google My Search History.

In 50% of the cases when I look for something using Google, I click not
on the site link itself, but on the "Cached" link:

-> www.cnn.com/ – 60k – Apr 19, 2005 – Cached – Similar pages

The access using "Cached" is usually faster, and provides the highlighting of the search terms on the page.

But, in the Search History, pages visited that way do not show up as visited, instead, only the search terms appear in the "Searches with no clicked results:".

can you really remove the old searches, or do they stay recorded on the server, like on a9?

Those of us in the UK tend to use a mix of Google.com and Google.co.uk, they are pretty much interchangeable, it would be handy if History gathered together search from both.

Google rocks, yet again. Thanks google.

My browsers already have this feature without all the data mining.

I like google too, but I'm realistic. Not to sound cynical, but "Don't be evil" will only last as long as the money does, and you can't take your data back once it's out there. Public companies have a responsibility to the stock holders—not you.

It is creepy. I'll just stick with the history option on my browser. I know that I won't always be at MY computer... but that's tough.

I don't like to sign into too many things on other peoples' computers anyway.

Not something I'd want to use.

I wish they would fix the display problems with google groups instead :(

This has the potential for being very destructive to many people. Because you CAN do something, it's NOT always better to do it. Google should carefully consider the problems that this has the potential to cause.

Such a good tool released very lately .....
Nice to save pages with good hits ......

Absolutely good.......

Nice to see a good tool....

Good.........

dotn like it casuse when i m showing my friends or momo sumthing my porn serching dosent come up

My Search does not work probably!
My saved entries is turning into: "Searches with no clicked results". It happens all the time. I don't get it!
Does any of you guys no why?

558 searches so far

Getnet GE: This happened to me also so I cleared my cookies and re logged in and it's worked fine from now on.

Google Search History is great. I've set it as my homepage in IE because I now use it as my favorites and find it quicker than trying to find something I filed long ago. I've been using it for about a month now and am getting more and more related searches showing up.

I was also researching accommodation for an upcoming holiday a few weeks ago and just went back to do some more yesterday. It was soooooo much easier the second time around as I could quickly find all the hotels I had originally found.

Google continues to make my life easier. I get so excited to see new products like this continuing to come out of development.

three cheers for Google. And quit looking at all that porn, that'll solve your problems!

I've temporarily paused and cleared my history, it was getting kinda embarrasing.
I'm all for Google as my Big Brother – as long as they don't "Don't Be Evil", they keep both the customers and the shareholders happy. Which seems simple enough. I know they track my surfing habits regardless of this neat utility – but I don't have any particular use for it, m'self.
I'll never be a Google-worshipper, but it's bloody good, innit?

why do I have to have a bleedin gmail account to see my search history? why not ask for the colour of my underwear while they're at it?

jctyler: You don't.

You need a *Google* Account.

Hmm Well look at this way ,,the goverment can come in with court order and say we want to see all the info on everyone "it did happen just a few weeks ago" and its just leaves a real bad feeling in my gut that one day it will come back to bite us all in the in the behind! but then again I could be wrong and i'm sure there's no out there still thinks that they have some sort of Priv- on the internet now a days! beacuse if you do then i got some land i like to sell you , Beach front in New Orleans:)

Even if you disable the Google search history, Google can still log your searches as long as you're logged in to any Google service. In fact even if you're not logged in they can log your IP + searches, and your ISP can resolve that to your real name upon gov't request...

how can i disable/delete the trends in this feature???