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How To Search Google Without Personalized Search Results

Written by Martin Wong on June 4, 2010

Google is now personalizing search results based upon your previous search history and your location (based on your IP address). Google has made it clear that personalizing search results is a significant part of its future search strategy so this is a trend that will continue. The result from personalized search is generally better and more accurate search results for most Google users.

However, if you want to search Google more objectively to see how your own website is ranking, for example, then Google’s personalized search can be very frustrating. Your website may be coming up first for important keywords when you are searching, but you’re not getting any traffic from these keywords because for everyone else you’re nowhere to be found on the first search results page. Fortunately, Google has made it easy to opt-out of the personalized search.

Disabling Personalized Search For All Searches

Here’s what you need to do:

1. First make sure you are logged out of your Google Account if you have one.
2. Next, perform a search on Google and then click on “Web History” in the top right corner of the search results page.
3. On the Web History page select “Disable customizations based on search activity” and you’re done.

Temporarily Disabling Personalized Search

If you want to only temporarily disable personalized search results, this is also possible. Try this:

1. If you don’t have a Google Account already (the one you would use for Gmail or Google Analytics) then sign up for an account.
2. Make sure you are logged into your account and then perform a search on Google.
3. Scroll down to the bottom of the first search results page and you will see the link for “View Customizations” at the bottom.

4. On the Search Customization Details page, you will see link a few lines from the bottom where you can view your search results  “without these improvement”. Click on that link and you will now be shown non-personalized search results for your most recent search only.

There you go! You can now search Google more objectively.