Gfanatic

Only January this year I started clicking “Remember me in this computer” whenever I log into my Google Account. I was inspired to do so after I ’stumbled upon’ someone else’s web history. Well, just because I knew his password and I decided to invade his private stuff, looked into his emails, feeds, blogs, and the most interesting one—his very detailed web history.

The oldest data gathered in his web history was in 2005. I guess it was the time he started using Gmail. (I am wondering now though how Google was able to gather data starting 2005 when they just announced the web history as a new feature April 2007. Maybe web history used to be in Google Labs before or Google has been gathering data eversince without us knowing. I am not sure.)

Anyways, because of the interesting data I found in his web history, I decided to always stay log into my Google Account whenever I use my computer. And I have been doing this for two months now and can see a lot of information already about my web searching behavior. Google has recorded the keywords I used; the web sites, images, and videos I viewed; and even how many times I visited a site. Google now also suggests interesting items to me. But what caught my attention this time is the trends feature of web history.

I was looking into my web history trends today and somehow got confused on what it says. I have easily understood the info on my top queries, my top sites, and my top clicks but not the graphs of my daily and hourly search activities. Because at first, I thought the numbers above the bars are my most recent search activities, but I was wrong.

The numbers above the bars are the overall number of searches done on a Monday, a Tuesday, a Wednesday… and searches done every 12 AM, 1 AM, 2 AM, and so on… (Thus, the name of the feature is ‘Trends’)

Here’s an example. Based on my daily search activity, Friday is my busiest day, and for Thursday these are my top queries and sites.

Based on my hourly search activity 6PM is my busiest hour, and for 7PM, these are my top queries and sites.

I hope though that Google would come up of a feature in web history where my recent search activities are being summarized as well, and I can see my top queries and sites yesterday, or last Monday. Just because… you’ll never know when you will need to analyze your own web searching behavior. There is a web activity calendar though that shows the number of searches you made each day like the one below.

And about the person who owns the Google Account, I admitted to him that I accessed his account and looked into his stuff. I felt guilty that I invaded his privacy since I was able to know more about him based on the keywords, and websites he often visited, which all appeared in his web history. He changed his password now and not telling me anymore.

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Related posts from other blogs:

• Google Web History is taking over my life
• Use Google Web History to remember where you went
• This is your life, according to Google