How to Erase Google's Search History?

With google quickly becoming the go to place to start all browsing, concerns are beginning to grow about privacy. google is able to track customer's browsing habits and tendencies and leverage this with their extensive ad network to share information with their advertising partners. One way to keep google at least partially off of your computer and enhance your privacy is to delete your google History.

Ways google is on Your Computer

google has quickly gained a commanding lead of market share. As such, they have a myriad of ways in which they attempt to get you to use their service. All of these ways store information about your searches. These records can exist on your browser (internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome) or on the google Toolbar. Often times, the google Toolbar is installed alongside other software, so it may be on your computer without you knowing it.

How to get google off Your Browser

To determine if your google records are on your computer, go to google.com and click on the search bar in the middle of the page. If a list of previous searches pops up, the information is stored in your browser. If you are using Internet Explorer, the steps are as follows: Click Tools, Delete Browsing History. When the window pops up, Select "History" and "Form Data" and then delete. This will take care of all of your browsing history and it will be cleared! If you are on Firefox, click Tools, Clear Recent History and then determine how much of your previous history you want deleted. Be sure to mark the boxes labeled "Browsing & Downlaod History" and "Form and Search History." This will delete all of the records of google from your browser!

Delete the Toolbar's History

To delete the search history from a google Toolbar (typically located at the top right or top left of your browser window) is a very easy process. Once you have found the google Toolbar, click the down arrow in the corner of the toolbar. Once the menu pops up of all of your previous searches, the very bottom will be a button that says "Clear History." Click this, and it will be gone! In the settings menu, you can also keep it from recording future history.

You can also look at "Private Browsing" options to keep google from recording future searches on your computer!