Clear Past Google Searches
Do you have some embarrassing search history on Google? Google improves your search results by using your past search history to learn your habits and preferences, but sometimes you just want to forget a search ever happened. Luckily, you can easily remove any past search from Google's memory, or even delete all of them in one fell swoop. See Step 1 below to learn how.
Contents
Steps
Removing Individual Searches
- Open the Google Search History page. This is a Google page that displays all of the Google searches you have performed while logged in with your Google account. Searches made while you are not logged in are not stored.
- You can access this page at google.com/history.
- Check the entries you want to delete. On the Search History page, you will see all of your searches listed for the past few days. You can see older items by clicking the Older > button. Check the box next to each entry that you want to remove.
- You can use the categories on the left side of the page to narrow down the results that are displayed.
- The check box will only appear next to the search term you entered, but checking the box will also remove any of the sites you selected from that search.
- To check everything displayed on the page, click the ☐ button at the top of the list.
- Remove the checked items. Click the Remove items button beneath the search activity charts. All of the selected items will be deleted from your search history.
Deleting Your Entire Search History
- Open the Google Search History page. This is a Google page that displays all of the Google searches you have performed while logged in with your Google account. Searches made while you are not logged in are not stored.
- You can access this page at google.com/history.
- Open the Settings menu. You can access this by clicking the Gear icon in upper-right corner of the page and select Settings from the menu that appears.
- Click the "delete all" link. You can find this link the paragraph about Google Search. Clicking this link will open a new window asking if you want to proceed. If you do, click the "Delete all" button.
- Turn off search history. If you'd rather have Google not save your search history, click the Turn off button in the Settings page. This will prevent Google from saving any of your search history, which may affect the results you get.
Deleting Your Browser's Auto-Complete
- Clear Internet Explorer auto-complete. Open the "Clear Recent History" window by pressing Ctrl+⇧ Shift+Del. Check the "Form data" box to remove any saved auto-complete information. Click the Delete button to remove the entries.
- Clear Google Chrome auto-complete. Open the "Clear browsing data" window by pressing Ctrl+⇧ Shift+Del. Check the "Autofill form data" box and then click the Clear browsing data button to remove the auto-complete entries.
- Make sure that the time range is set to "the beginning of time" if you want to remove all of the saved entries.
- Clear Firefox auto-complete. Open the "Clear Recent History" window by pressing Ctrl+⇧ Shift+Del. Check the "Forms & Search History" box and then click the Clear Now button to remove the auto-complete entries.
- Make sure that the time range is set to "Everything" if you want to remove all of the saved entries.
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