Trying out Google's Web History I see value in instant recall of things you've seen but forgot about. Searching your own history, that is.

I already showed how you can have your own web history without Google. Today I found out that I might actually prefer that technique versus Google's -- and privacy has nothing to do with it.

I was reading the extremely interesting New York Times article Genes Take Charge, and Diets Fall by the Wayside. Later today I mentioned that article to a friend who asked for the URL. Oh, what a beautiful moment to experiment with the usefulness of Google's Web History!

"diet". Nothing. "diets". Nothing. "new york times". Nothing. "genetics". Nothing. "genetics"... still nothing.

Yet in the web history I am able to see the individual URL's I visited on NY Times... Which different titles though... Instead of "Genes Take Charge, and Diets Fall by the Wayside - New York Times" in Google's Web History the title for that very URL reads "The New York Times - Breaking News, World News & Multimedia".

Either way, Google doesn't have the title or content of that page available. The same holds true for any page which hasn't yet been indexed and cached by Google yet.

So, if you thought Google's Web History was a great way to have access to all your previous content -- not so.

The question mark whether or not it will have a specific page you visited makes Google's Web History less of a "trusted system".

About the Author: Ruud Hein

I love helping to make web sites make it. From the ground up if needed. CSS challenges, server-side scripting, user and device friendly JavaScript tricks search engines have no problems with. Tracking how the sites perform and then figuring out how to make that performance and the tracking better. I'm passionate about information. No matter how often I trim my feeds in my feed readers (yes, I use more than one), I always have a couple of hundred in there covering topics ranging from design to usability, from SEO to SEM, from life hacks to productivity blogs, from.... Well, you get the idea, I guess. Knowledge and information management is close to my heart. Has to be with the amount of information I track. My "trusted system" is usually in flux but always at hand and fully searchable. My paid passion job at Search Engine People sees me applying my passions and knowledge to a wide array of problems, ones I usually experience as challenges. It's good to have you here: pleased to meet you!

Related Posts

Related Articles

View All

  • 8 Ways to Optimize Your Digital Marketing Without Reducing Your Budget

    In today’s fast-paced and uncertain economic conditions, both large and small businesses often face difficult decisions about their marketing budgets.  [...]

    Brian Tatarnic
    Brian TatarnicApr 14, 2025

  • “Made in Canada” has become one of the most searched terms in the past two months.

    Some economic environments significantly impact customer behaviour, and we are seeing that on display now. People want to be [...]

    Wisam Abdulaziz
    Wisam AbdulazizApr 2, 2025

  • The Best Tools to Check Domain Authority

    Many SEO beginners often mistake domain authority (DA) as a Google made metric. It was actually created by MOZ [...]

    Billy Li
    Billy LiMar 26, 2025

  • Tariffs, Economic Uncertainty, and How Businesses Can Adapt

    The global economy is experiencing significant challenges and uncertainties. Many countries are implementing tariffs and other trade measures in an [...]

    Chris Walton
    Chris WaltonMar 26, 2025