If you are a casual Internet user and have a Google email address you should be aware that your information belongs to Google. What many probably don’t realize is just how much information Google is collecting across all of it’s services as it paints a “Web History” of what you are doing or attempting to do online. This is especially true for web site owners, bloggers who may be using many Google services like Google Plus, Google Analytics just to name a few.
Watch a video explaining Web History and how to disable it:
Google Web History doesn’t just contain a list of all searches and links that you click on when you search for something signed in as your Google account, Google Web History also can list various search results, try to predict what you were attempting to search for and even list other references just to paint a picture of what you may have been doing.
This can serve a valid purpose like maybe allowing you to remember what you were looking for a few weeks ago and help your remember to recover something you were in the middle of doing, but it also is trusting and allowing Google to have all of this information which no doubt is shared with advertisers in a way to make sure advertisements and potentially sponsored search results are more relevant to your browsing and searching patterns online. After all if Google knows you have a history of searching and browsing for clothing online, advertisers could be more inclined to purchase showing banner ads around products you would be more interested in rather than necessarily the keywords specifically being search for that time.
This is profiling and displaying ads based on what you are more likely to spend money on or have a history of searching for rather than the immediate search result. This can be a way to more directly entice a web user to click or purchase something that may not be related at all to the search they were just making by relying on past patterns and trends of behavior.
Disabling Google Web History is fairly easy and is recommended for anyone who doesn’t want Google keeping track of everything they do online when signed into Google. Note: Google Web History is not the same thing as your web browser history or Google Chrome history, this isn’t cookies or history stored in your browser that can be cleared with a browser cache flush, this is history stored in the Google cloud for your online profile and is not stored in your browser at all.
Steps to turn off Google Web History
- Log into Google Account
- Go to https://www.google.com/settings/?ref=home
- Click on Web History under Services
- Click Pause for Web History
- Optionally remove all web history
How do you feel about letting Google keep track of all this information? Do you have your web history turned on right now, will you be disabling or have you already turned off Google web history?
Share your feedback.
-Dragon Blogger