Clearing your Google search history is extremely simple and doesn’t take more than a couple of minutes. You just need to use the “My Activity” dashboard that’s built into your Google account. We’ll show you exactly how to do it in this guide.
On top of that, we’ll quickly discuss how you can clear your search history from different Google products like YouTube, Chrome, Gmail, and Google Maps.
How to Clear Google Search History
You don’t need to clear your Google search history on every device you use Google services on. All you need is the “My Activity” dashboard. You can access it from any device with a browser, but we recommend using a desktop or laptop. Here’s how to use “My Activity” to clear your Google search history.
1. Access the “My Activity” dashboard. To do that, head to https://myactivity.google.com/ and log into your Google account.
2. Select the “Delete” dropdown menu. It’s located above your searches, on the right. Then select “Delete all time.”
3. Choose what you’ll delete. Google will now show you a list of items you’ll remove. Make sure that “Search” is selected.
4. Confirm the deletion process. Just click “Delete” and wait for Google to remove your search history.
And that’s it. You just have to wait for Google to clear your search history. The process should be instantaneous. Once it’s finished, you’ll see this message:
Can You Clear Google Search History Using Custom Date Ranges?
If you don’t want to clear everything, you can also set up a custom date range and only the searches within those dates will be deleted. To do this, you just have to access the “My Activity” service. After that, click the “Delete” dropdown menu and select the “Delete custom range” option. This will open a pop-up window that lets you choose the time period you want to clear from your search history.
Can You Clear Individual Google Searches?
You can also remove individual searches and even use a search function to look up search terms and websites from your history. Just head to the “My Activity” page, browse through search entries until you find the one you want to clear, and then click the gray “X” icon to the right of it. Google will ask you to confirm that you want to remove this search entry. Confirm by clicking “Delete.”
Can You Auto-Delete Google Search History?
After deleting your current Google search history, you can actually set up auto-deletion so you don’t have to go through the process again and again. Just access the “My Activity” service, click the “Delete” drop-down menu, and select “Auto-delete” (it should be set to “Off” by default).
A pop-up window will appear that lets you tell Google to automatically delete your search history after certain time periods. At the moment, you can only auto-delete search activity that’s older than three months, 18 months, or 36 months.
Pro Tip: If you are planning on regularly deleting your Google search history a few times a year, we recommend setting up Google to auto-delete search entries that are older than three months.
How to Clear Search History From Google Products
Google is more than just a search engine. The company actually owns lots of other products1 that you likely use daily, such as YouTube, Gmail, and Chromebook. Your Google search history — along with other search entries — is also logged by these services and products, sometimes separately. So, we’ll quickly go over how to clear your search history on the most popular Google products.
How to Clear Chrome Search History
We’re starting with Google Chrome not just because it’s owned by Google, but because it’s currently the most popular web browser — it accounts for over 60% of the web browser market share.2
The easiest way to clear your Google Chrome search history is to access the browser’s “History” tab. From there, you can delete individual search entries, remove all search history, or clear data from specific time periods.
If you’d like to learn more about this, we recommend checking out our guide to clearing your search history on Chrome. The guide includes step-by-step instructions and screenshots.
How to Clear Android Search History
To delete your search history on Android, you’ll need to use the “My Activity” service. You can easily access it via the Chrome browser. For a detailed tutorial, you should read our full guide to clearing your search history on Android. In addition to Chrome, we cover other popular Android browsers, including Samsung Internet and Firefox.
How to Clear Chromebook Search History
Like the name implies, you can primarily clear your Chromebook search history via the laptop’s Chrome browser. Simply access the “History” tab and delete your search history. If you’d like step-by-step instructions, check out our guide to clearing search history on Chromebook.
How to Clear Gmail Search History
You can clear your Gmail search history by accessing the email service on desktop. You can also do this through the mobile app or the “My Activity” service. For a more in-depth look at the whole process, please read our Gmail search history deletion guide.
How to Clear Google Maps Search History
On both desktop and mobile, you can delete your Google Maps search history by using the “My Activity” service. We suggest reading our full guide to clearing your Google Maps search history. We provide step-by-step instructions on how to do this on desktop and mobile. Our guide also includes screenshots.
Troubleshooting Tips for Clearing Google Search History
If you’re experiencing issues with clearing your Google search history, here’s what we recommend doing:
- Clear the search history on your Google account. If you only cleared it on Chrome, that will only remove it from the browser. It will still be available in your Google account. To completely delete your Google search history, make sure to do so via the “My Activity” service in your Google account dashboard.
- Update your Chrome browser. If you’re using an older version of Chrome, you might experience issues while trying to clear your search history. So, update it and try again. If the issue persists, we recommend refreshing the page you’re on, then logging out and back into your account.
- Clear your search history on all synced devices. If you synced all your devices with your Google account, that will also sync the search history on each device. So, make sure to clear the search history on each device.
Does Clearing Your Google Search History Hide It From Your Internet Provider?
Clearing your Google search history will remove the search terms and websites you visited from your account, but it doesn’t change the fact that your internet service provider (ISP) can monitor your web traffic. It might not see exactly what you search for on Google, but it will still know that you connected to the site. In fact, your ISP can see any site you access. Some of you might not care about this, but we empathize with those of you who do, as it essentially compromises your online privacy.
If you want to hide your browsing traffic from your ISP, we recommend using a VPN (Virtual Private Network). This is an online service that encrypts your internet traffic. Basically, it makes it completely unreadable. If your ISP tries to check what sites you connect to, they’ll only see gibberish.
VPNs are extremely easy to use. You just need to install a VPN app on your device, and use it to connect to a VPN server. Once you do that, all your internet traffic will be encrypted. If you’re interested in using a VPN, we recommend checking out our list of the best VPN services in 2025.
Expert Insight: If you’re planning to use a VPN for privacy reasons, we’d like to highlight another perk. A VPN not only secures your internet traffic but also hides your IP address. This will stop websites and malicious actors from using your IP to learn what country and city you live in.
Will Clearing My Google Search History Sign Me Out of My Google Account?
No, doing this will only delete your search history. This means your search terms won’t show up in your Google account activity or your browser’s history tab. However, you’ll still be logged into your Google account.
This is true even if you clear your browser’s cookies in addition to the search history. Cookies are small text files that browsers store on your device. They save your passwords, keep you logged into accounts, and remember your website preferences. Normally, clearing your cookies would log you out of any accounts you’re signed into, but this doesn’t apply to Google.
Does Clearing Your Google Search History Also Clear Your Passwords?
Clearing your Google search history also will not clear your saved passwords — at least not by default. Just make sure the checkbox next to “Passwords and other sign-in data” remains unchecked. If you do want to remove your saved passwords (i.e. if you’re switching to a premium password manager and have already migrated your passwords), simply click the checkbox, and your saved passwords in Chrome will be deleted.
Can You Stop Google From Tracking Your Search History?
Now that you know everything about clearing your existing Google search history, let’s talk about what’s next. To a certain extent, you can stop Google from tracking your search history. Basically, you can configure your Google account so that new activity isn’t saved to it, but that’s about it. Google will still use previously saved data to personalize your experience unless you delete it.
If you’d like to try this, here’s what you need to do:
1. Head to the “My Activity” page. Click “Web & App Activity.”
2. Click the “Turn off” dropdown menu. Next, click either “Turn off” or “Turn off and delete activity.”
3. And you’re done. Your Google account will no longer log your future searches.
But remember -— even if you disable that option, Google will still collect a lot of your data.3 Examples include your location information, as well as the apps and browsers you use to access Google’s services.
Can You Use Incognito Mode to Hide Your Google Search History?
If you’d rather keep your history but prevent Google from saving your current browsing session, going Incognito is the solution. Basically, when you use Incognito mode, the browser won’t save your searches and browsing history on exit.
FYI: If you’re interested in hiding your browsing from your ISP, Incognito mode won’t help. For that, you’d need to use a VPN. It will encrypt your browsing traffic, preventing your ISP from monitoring it.
Conclusion
With over 16 billion searches per day,4 Google is without a doubt the most popular search engine on the web. You likely use it daily and have accumulated a lengthy list of search entries. If you’re interested in clearing your Google search history, you can easily do so via the “My Activity” service.
Simply access it through your Google account dashboard and choose how you want to remove your search history. You can remove it entirely, only remove individual entries, or clear specific time ranges.
Frequently Asked Questions
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What’s the easiest way to clear my Google search history?
The most straightforward way to do this is via the “My Activity” service. You can access it via your Google account dashboard, and use it to quickly clear your entire search history.
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Why can’t I clear my Google search history?
This could be due to several reasons. Perhaps you only cleared the history on your browser when you also need to clear it in your Google account. Or maybe your Chrome browser is out of date. Additionally, if you sync your device to your Google account, you’ll need to clear the search history on those devices as well.
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Will I get signed out of my Google account if I clear my search history?
No, deleting your search history won’t sign you out. You won’t be signed out of your Google account, even if you decide to clear your browser’s cookies.
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Do I need to clear my Google search history if I use Incognito mode?
No, because Incognito mode doesn’t save your search history or browsing traffic. It automatically deletes everything when you close the browser.
