Effective
Web Search with
by
Nowshade Kabir
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You were looking for certain information on the web. After several attempts using different words and phrases with your favorite search engine, you finally have found the required information but, as it happens, forgot to bookmark the pages. In a few days when you needed to check out the same pages again, to your utter dismay, you realized that you couldn’t recall how you searched out those pages. Sounds familiar? If you are like me, you probably face this problem quite frequently! Finding the right page link you are seeking from the browser’s history feature, out of hundreds of pages that you have visited recently, is not easy either!
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More over, browser’s history page remembers where you have been as you browse the web for a limited time only. Things may be a little easier if you use Google Desktop search or similar tools from other search engines, but again if you don’t always use the same computer, even this might not be of much help.
My
Search History – a new Google feature
However,
thanks to new “My Search History” feature from Google,
now you are able to overcome this difficulty. The service, which
is still at beta stage and released just recently, provides complete
search history of all the past searches made through Google once
you install it. The search histories are stored on Google’s
servers, this enables you to access search histories from any computer.
From your search history page you are able to make a query on the
search history itself. On the history page at the right side you
can see the search words or phrases used for making a query, time
of the query made, pages visited related to the query and the page
link. At the left side, there is a calendar to check out the search
made by you on an earlier date. It also shows how many searches
you have done on a certain day and how intense your search activity
was on each day. A neat feature, which will help you get rid of
the problem mentioned in the beginning of the article, will show
you relevant search results from your “My History Pages”
along with the new search results while you make a query. “This
feature of Google Web search enables you to find information you
thought you lost", Google claims on its site.
How
to install?
In
order to add this feature go to the "My Search History"
link on your Google home page and search results pages, by clicking
the My Search History link on Google Labs, or by going directly
to http://www.google.com/searchhistory. If you ever registered with
any of Google’s services, i.e. Gmail, Newsgroups, Froogle,
etc. you may use same user name and password to install this feature.
If you don’t have account with Google as yet, don’t worry
unlike Gmail account you can go to the following page https://www.google.com/accounts/NewAccount
and create a new account. Once you created an account, you can turn
on “My Search History”, which will add the link to your
Google home page and search results pages.
Is
this feature something new?
This
is actually not a new feature on the Internet. This service of Google
has striking similarity to the one already existed on Meta Search
tool www.a9.com. Other search engines like www.askjeeves.com and
little know www.findory.com also have some thing similar incorporated
to their systems. A9 also has a feature called “Discover”,
which along with your search results recommends sites relevant to
the query. The My Yahoo Search test released in October also enables
users to save, share and post notes on their own search results.
Privacy
issues
There
is always a reason to be concerned when your Internet activities
are tracked and kept by any company. However, Google has taken several
steps so that a user can have total control on how he exploits this
service. First, you have to log on in order to use this feature.
Your log in status is visible all the time on the Google home page.
If you can see your account name on top right side of the page,
this means you are signed in. If you don’t want certain searches
to be tracked by Google, you have two choices. Either you can suspend
the service for a while by clicking on the “pause” button
or just log off from the service. You can also erase search results
from history page by clicking on “Remove” link. Combination
of all these mechanisms will allow you to keep your searches private
and protected. However, if you are overly concerned about privacy,
you better refrain from using this feature.
Benefits
Most
of Google’s features carry great values for users. The personalization
of search processes using “My Search History” allows you
to get a better search experience. It’s a significant leap
towards creating an ideal search system. The benefits of this feature
for Google are also enormous! Almost all of Google’s revenue
comes from search ads. Naturally, Google’s ability to provide
more refined search results to users will allow vendors better targeting
their market niche. They would spend substantially more if they
could show ads to users based on their past search history. But,
Google claims that at this moment it is not planning to post any
ads on your history pages.
No doubt, this is an interface that many of us have been waiting for quite a while. However, its impact on the future of search engines remains to be seen!
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