Things Google Know about you

Today I have brought you another cool topic. So far we have been talking about Google and why they need to know about you and me. If you haven’t read that post yet here is the link,


What we were discussing there was about the Google’s endless desire to collect information about their visitors. We saw that Google is creating a general idea about you based upon these data for their advertising purposes (and also to provide a better experience for you).

So today we are going to see what Google knows about you. But before we start let’s consider some important things. 

Why you need to know about this?
Yes, if you do not have any idea about this, you might not understand the importance and the risk behind this. If you are using any website, it is very important to be aware about their policies. You should know whether they collect any of your personal details, whether they store Cookies in your computer. If they do so, definitely they will mention about that in their policies, and by using the website you eventually agree to their terms and conditions, which mean you allow collecting your personal details. That is the same scenario with Google as well.

Sometimes people use Google to search about very sensitive things. As an example let’s say a person is having a serious problem which bothers him / her so much, and he is not in a position to reveal it to anybody else. Now this person wants to know the opinion of others about that problem, and whether anybody else has had the same experience. So as the best option available he uses Google to search the internet (yes you are right, probably he will find something similar in Yahoo answers :D). The most important thing is, now this person has left very sensitive information about him online. Even though Google protects the privacy of its users, what will happen if anybody else gets this information? Yes, it will be a serious question. So you must think twice before acting online. The purpose of this article is to make you aware about this. Luckily now you know this, and also you have the ability to see what Google is storing about you.
My suggestion is, do not leave any personal data with Google. That will be healthy for you. In the meantime do not worry about other simple and common queries you search in your day to day life. Those queries will help you to get the search results that match with your preferences.

 What data Google has collected about me?
This will be the question you will have once you finish reading the above paragraph. Well, the main data will be your search queries. Besides them, they log your activity in internet including the sites you visit, emails in your Gmail inbox etc.

How to find the details Google stored about you?
You cannot view all the logged details. But as a summary you can view your activity in Google. This feature is known as “Google Web History”.





First you have to visit http://google.com/history/

You can see they have stated why they are storing these data with them; read the tagline, “Your history makes your Google experience better”. This is what I have been explaining to you.
·         More Relevant Results.
·         Smarter Predictions.
·         History on any device.

Then you will be asked to log in to your account.

Once you log in, you can see some detailed reports about your online activity in Google including the total number of Searches you have made through Google, Your daily, weekly & monthly activity,
Below those charts, you will see all your queries stored by Google, from there you can choose which queries to be kept and which queries to be deleted. As I mentioned earlier, if you find anything very sensitive, immediately delete that from the history.

Now, something from me :)




This is a snapshot of my dashboard taken few days back;

Hourly search activity
You can see that I am mostly searching Google in the middle of the day, Look at how the length of the bars have increased suddenly from 6 to 8, and gradually getting increased till 12. After that the length drops down till 6.  And exactly at 8 the bar goes up. Yes, I agree with this chart. I start my day at 6 am, and sometimes I search Google from the very moment I wake Up :D After that I go to work at 8 am and till 5 pm, I search many things (Hope my boss will not read this post :D). You also can check whether your graphs match with your daily routine. (Don’t forget to leave your idea here as a comment.)


I hope you enjoyed reading this post and at least few of you guys added something to your life. Of course these stuffs are really cool to check out. Please let me know what you think.

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