Google has been criticized before for putting your search results inside a “filter bubble.” That’s because Google uses data from each of your searches to create a profile on you and tailors all future search results accordingly. Over a period of time, you end up seeing the kind of results you like, but that means you might occasionally miss useful results from outside of your typical corner of the internet. Now, Google is offering a new toggle to more easily turn off personalized search results, which may be one way to escape the bubble.
How to turn off personalized Google search results
Turning off personalized search results is simple enough on paper, and has actually been around for decades, but it can be tricky to get the new toggle to appear for you. Try searching for something on Google and scrolling to the bottom of the results page. Below the “Goooooooooogle” logo and the page numbers, you might see a small line of text that reads “Results are personalized.” Click the Try without personalization button right next to it. This will turn off personalized search results in Google search.
The feature was first spotted by Search Engine Roundtable, although it’s unclear why it doesn’t always appear.
If you’re not seeing the new toggle, the website also pointed out that you can still add &pws=0 to the end of any Google search URL to remove personalization, a technique that’s been reported on as far back as 2007. Alternatively, open your Google account settings and navigate to the Data & Privacy tab. Then, uncheck the toggle under Search personalization. Click here to be taken right to the page you need.
To confirm if your results are no longer personalized, try another search and scroll to the bottom again. The “Results are personalized” text should have changed to “Results are not personalized.” You’ll have to disable personalization separately on each device or browser that you use for Google search.
Credit: Pranay Parab
I tried this in a few different browsers, and in most cases, I saw that results were not personalized by default. This is probably because I actively reject Google’s annoying cookie banners each time, or because I unknowingly tweaked one of the many settings on the site. When I went back and accepted a cookie pop-up, I finally saw the option to stop personalization.
While this feature is nice to have, you should know that you can’t truly escape Google’s filter bubble if that’s the only search engine you use, since the site is still making plenty of behind-the-scenes decisions on what to feature. There are plenty of other great Google alternatives, including the paid search engine Kagi, which allow you to escape the bubble.
