Comments on: Other handy uses for web history

By: Steve

Steve — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 01:20:51 +0000

not sure if its common – but every now and then I use my google web history to find sites i have visited. Although I have noticed this before – it appears that hundreds of searches that I have not completed appear on my account. Is this some sort of spamming tactic?

By: Thomas Auge

Thomas Auge — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 21:41:01 +0000

WTF Matt? I have a google account for adwords, adsense, webmaster console, etc. It took me a moment to realize what those numbers next to the URLs on the SERP were. Ok, I am slow like that. The next thing I wondered was “how the f*ck?”. It took me another moment (yeah, yeah ) to figure out that you guys were rewriting outgoing URLs through onmousedown when I was logged in. Help me out here, isn’t that a really bad type of cloaking?
You are tracking my clicks without any notification? Seriously guys, that is a bit much big brother for my taste!
I am not saying google is evil, but those things do not help to build trust! On the contrary, they make me very very careful about google cookies and sessions. What other data do you collect? What data COULD you collect? Oh h*ll – a lot. I cannot say I like it.
I admire the combined technical competence assembled at google, but your PR (Public Relations, not PageRank, damn SEOs ) is kinda lacking. Come on, you can do better than that!

By: Shell Harris

Shell Harris — Wed, 23 May 2007 15:11:02 +0000

I didn’t realize this was part of Google’s offerings. Thanks for including it in your blog. I will give it a try and it gives me another reason to log into my Google account which I have been hesitant to do for privacy reasons.

By: shehap

shehap — Wed, 09 May 2007 19:59:33 +0000

Thanks a bunch

By: Archna Sajwan

Archna Sajwan — Fri, 04 May 2007 04:37:50 +0000

Yes, indeed it’s a nice tool by which you can access your search history from any machine no matter where you go. This is good especially people like me who do lots of search and gather all searched site in a doc file.
I really do appreciate with Google proposing tools and facilities.

By: jumpenjuhosaphat

jumpenjuhosaphat — Tue, 01 May 2007 08:50:32 +0000

That’s a pretty neat tool and all…..But, it alters the results pages. I frequently check the position of some of my competitive search terms, and one day found that my most competitive search term had moved up to 3rd position from it’s long held 5th position. Well, needless to say, I was ecstatic to finally be above the fold. My wife searched the same term, low and behold, still in position 5. I have turned off search tracking, but I still have to sign out to view my actual search position in Google.

So why is it that the results are altered?

Also, are there any plans(or has it already been implemented) to begin counting unique result page click throughs and basing search results on that data?

By: /pd

/pd — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 15:00:19 +0000

History just saved my butt – I lost all bookmarks for the last 2 months.. I found that I can recreate these by reviewing my history ..kinda salvaged about 60-70% of bookmarks

By: James

James — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 09:11:27 +0000

http://www.squarefree.com/extensions/high/ is a firefox extension that will take you to the referrer of the page you’re on, even if you’ve opened the page in a new tab or restarted your browser.

By: AJ-credit

AJ-credit — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 19:06:20 +0000

Matt – in your last comment response, you said
“…my declaration in the DOJ case last year, you can find a link here…”
but did not provide a link. Could you provide that link?

Thanks!

By: Aaron Pratt

Aaron Pratt — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 19:01:26 +0000

It is refreshing having no history and a browser cache that empties when you close it. No thanks to web history, nothing I visit can’t be found by doing a Google search or from a bookmark. Google searches are fun and educational if you are a fan of quality.