When you search for anything on Google, you get a lot many search suggestions in the drop-down menu. This is certainly not magic. It is actually the result of data storage done by the search engine. It might have been done to enhance the user experience, but of late, it has been wreaking havoc in the personal lives of the people. The very idea of someone knowing the activity history, the last website visited or people we talked to is creepy enough at various levels. But all this can be avoided if we know the process of erasing Google History.
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What is erased and how by erasing Google History?
When you search something on Google or do any activity like booking a ticket or hotel room, or chatting, etc., your record gets saved in Google’s servers. So, when you are erasing the search history from Google Chrome or any other web browser, it simply deletes the data that is residing on the browser or on that computer where activities have been performed.
Unfortunately, the data that is there on the servers of Google remains untouched during this process. So, erasing Google history will work in the real sense when your data from the search engine’s servers is erased.
When you delete activity trail from a Google account, you will be un-saving things like:
- Bookmarks
- Calendar
- Photos
- Classroom
- Chats in Hangouts
- Any web app activity
- Contacts
- Google Drive Activities
- Browser History
- Cookies
- Location history
- Data from All other Google Accounts like Google Chrome, Gmail, YouTube, etc.
Since all browsing data is not related to personal matters, you might want to save certain things; as is evident from the above list. So, before you delete your Google search record or start the process of deleting the data from Google’s servers, you must unselect those things from the internet history which you might need in the future. Get these items zipped in a file and receive a download link to retrieve this zipped file on the location of your choice on your computer or in the mailbox.
Steps to Erase Google History
Once you have saved the things you do not want to part with, follow these steps to erase Google history you want to delete:
- Go to My Activity dashboard and click on triple vertical dots
- A drop-down menu appears, go to option ‘Delete Activity By’
- You will find options like Delete by product or topic, delete by time
- In delete by time, you are provided with time range options to select from
- You are given an option ‘All Time’, few other options like 7 days, etc. and there is an option ‘Customize’ that allows you inputting the time range of your choice
- And then click ‘delete’.
This is all you need to delete the activity history from Google account.
Naturally, to carry out this process you require a Google account. So, firstly, open a Google account to be able to perform the deletion of History.
Why erasing activity log from Google is considered
The most common reasons for erasing personal data from Google account are:
- To prevent intrusion of one’s internet privacy from the third party
- To stop the same websites from browser history to appear in search results
- To get rid of undue eating up of resources caused by saving of a lot of data
- To ensure the privacy of financial data like credit card details, etc.
- To erase information about your Google search history.
What would be the immediate results of erasing Google activity history?
If you have not chosen the accounts or applications from which data is to be saved, all Google activities appear automatically in the selected state. So, when you choose to delete without downloading the data required, you lose all the activities done by you using Google account.
Thus, you will be filling all fields of the forms manually when you are using the Internet.
Also, all the records of websites visited, personal chats, financial data stored, addresses, phone numbers saved, etc. will be erased.
Your activity of deleting history does not have a permanent effect, however. To ensure that Google does not save your data in the coming times, you may choose two options – either you repeat the process on a regular basis, or you make changes in settings in Activity controls at https://myaccount.google.com/activitycontrols. If you select pause saving all activities, you are free from the prying eyes of Google.
Please Note: Those who want to retrieve deleted data can restore the computer or laptop to the point before the deletion was done, in case erasing has been done by mistake.
See Also…
Tips on How to Make a Website for Free on Google(Opens in a new browser tab)
How and why bypass Google phone verification(Opens in a new browser tab)
How does Google Make Money?(Opens in a new browser tab)
Top 3 uses of Bing Reverse Image Search You Must Know(Opens in a new browser tab)
