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Google Web History Adds Download Option & Drops Filter Options

Google has quietly changed how your Google Web History page works. You can now download all your historical searches to your computer, but you can no longer filter the data by search vertical on the screen.

Alex Chitu from Google Operating System noticed both changes and documented the difference.

Export Your Google Web History

To export your web history from Google, go to history.google.com and click on the menu icon at the top right of the page. Then click the download button:

google-history-menu

After you click on that, you are given the disclaimer and then the option to download this data into a file. Here is the disclaimer:

google-history-export

For more on this feature, check out this help document from Google.

Google Removes Filters From Web History

Sadly, you can now longer isolate and filter our just your image searches from your news searches from your web searches within Google Web History anymore. Google dropped the filters that were available along side the left hand navigation bar. Here is a picture of what it looked like in 2012 from Alex:

google-web-history

Now, the options on the left hand are are simply missing.

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About the author

Barry Schwartz
Barry Schwartz is a technologist and a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics.

In 2019, Barry was awarded the Outstanding Community Services Award from Search Engine Land, in 2018 he was awarded the US Search Awards the "US Search Personality Of The Year," you can learn more over here and in 2023 he was listed as a top 50 most influential PPCer by Marketing O'Clock.

Barry can be followed on X here and you can learn more about Barry Schwartz over here or on his personal site.