Google offers Web search results that are customized based on their previous search history and clicks. For example, if someone consistently favors a particular sports site, Google will put that site high in the results when they look up sports topics in its search engine.
For years, the search results’ customization service has involved Google’s track of a user’s Web search history for up to 180 days. As per Google, an anonymous cookie in the user’s browser helps track the search queries and the results that have been most frequently clicked on by the user.
“Previously, we only offered Personalized Search for signed-in users, and only when they had Web History enabled on their Google Accounts,” Google’s Bryan Horling and Matthew Kulick, both Google software engineers, wrote in a Google blog post on Friday. “What we’re doing today is expanding Personalized Search so that we can provide it to signed-out users as well.”
This, of course, is not just about search results. By building a profile of past searches, Google can also gain insights into what kinds of advertising you’re most likely to favor, therefore placing more targeted (and expensive) ads alongside those search results.
Google spokesman Nathan Tyler said: “Our goal is to provide relevant search results. The benefits that we’ve seen for signed-in users were so great we want to extend those same benefits to everyone.”