With personalization, you get Google Search results tailored for you based on your activity. Personalization is only used if it can provide information that’s likely to be more helpful to you. This page explains how Google shows personalized results and how to control them.
Tip: Search results may vary between people for reasons other than personalization, such as language settings or localized results.
Learn more about personalized results for signed in users
If you have Search Personalization turned on, your Search experience will be personalized, based on things like your search history.
Personalization doesn’t affect all search results. Instead, some results might be personalized while others aren’t.
Sometimes, personalization may affect the order that individual results would be ranked on the search results page.
Other times, personalization might affect the order in which certain content blocks appear. In other words, a set of video results might appear above a set of web links, if your search history indicates that you prefer video content over web content.
If you have Search Personalization enabled, you may find a note in the footer of the search results page.
- Results are personalized.
If you have Search Personalization or Web & App Activity (WAA) turned off, or you’ve entered a query that we don’t provide personalized results for, you’ll find a note in the footer that reflects that.
- Results are not personalized.
You can always see a non-personalized version of the results for your query when you click on the link in the footer ("Try without").
In some instances, the non-personalized search results for your query may look the same as the personalized results. This means that for this query, the effect of personalization was too small to move the results much or at all. The results you see are only reranked if doing so will provide information that’s likely to be more helpful to you.
Tip: Clicking on "Try without" will not affect your settings.
Learn how to modify your personalization settings for your account.
Lastly, even if you have Search personalization disabled, Search still uses the context of your query to improve results. Some examples of context include the general area you’re searching from, language, and device type. This means, for example, if you search [pizza near me] in a particular city, you could get results relevant to that location. The location used for your search is displayed in the footer, along with a link to update it if you choose.
Turn off personalization
If you turn off personalization, it will no longer be used to show you helpful individual results or any features that depend on personalization. In addition, this setting change:
- Does disable your ability to find past searches in Autocomplete.
- Doesn’t pause or delete stored activity within your Google Account. You can always pause or delete stored activity through data and privacy controls.
- Doesn’t disable or delete app or website preferences. For example, language settings or search settings, like number of results per page, are preferences and aren’t affected.
- Doesn’t disable or delete material you save. For example, saved items in your Collection, stocks you follow, or your home and work address aren’t affected.
To turn off personalization while you’re signed in, turn off "Personalize Search." When you turn off Web & App Activity, you also turn off personalization. To disable personalization while you’re signed out of your Google Account, turn off "Search customization is on."