I did a search for “how to hide my browsing history” and the top result was an article from The How-To Geek titled How to Clear Your Browsing History in Chrome . This made me curious about what other information Google tracks through search queries and related activity like clicks on the links in their results pages (since Google tracks that too ) For instance is it possible to find deleted sites visited as well as search queries entered? Since my privacy concerns are overblown due to being this blog that had its entire content published on the web, I decided it would be fun to find out.

While there are no doubt many legitimate uses for such data, this makes me feel like a lab animal at times so I decided it was time to take a look at what Google knows about me – especially as some of that info is very personal .

Here’s what you need to do:

  1. Use your browsers in incognito or private mode to search for what you want

  2. Select a related link – this will take you to Google’s results page with the original query and URL intact

  3. Your query is still there! I can’t emphasize that enough

Now all you need are some simple instructions on how to easily extract information from Google’s database of searches .

You Are What You Search For : Recover Deleted Google Searches, Sites Visited & More

The How-To Geek article provides an easy way to delete all your history across all browsers in one go through Chrome settings (for those who use it) like so

To see your history, you first need to sign in. Once you have signed in, scroll down and click “My Activity.” On the next page, select “History” to find out what’s on your browsing history.Finally, choose whatever search was made from the list to view it or browse any time period desired.

Deleting all of your browsing history doesn’t do away with all of the information Google has about you. Unlike othertech companies, Google says it will actually delete the data associated with your account after youdelete it.

Launch the iPhone Chrome history recovery software. From the start-up window, please select “Recover from iOS”. After then, you can see there is a “Scan” button on the right side of your iPhone. Click it, letting the software looking for deleted Google Chrome histories on your phone.

Delete your Google activity from all of your devicesOn any device, go to myactivity.google.com and tap Menu > Delete Activity by. Below “Delete Activity” choose All time, then tap Next > Delete.

Please log into your Google account associated with your browser and go to the My Activity page. From here, you can view all your past browsing history which will show how many pages you’ve visited in days, months and more!