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Google just made it easier to turn off personalized search results

An illustration of Google’s multicolor “G” logo
Illustration: The Verge

Google is making it easier to switch off personalized search results thanks to an option that sometimes appears at the bottom of the results page, as reported by Search Engine Roundtable. After searching for something, scroll all the way down and look for a link to “Try without personalization.” Click or tap that and Google will load a new page without personalized results.

The link might not be present for you in all searches. Some results for me include a message at the end of the results page that already says “Results are not personalized.” This might be user error — maybe I have other settings that prevent it from appearing or am not using the right queries. But I did get the option to turn off personalized results much more often for searches on my iPhone than on my Mac, for some reason.

You have already been able to get unpersonalized search results for a very long time; as Search Engine Roundtable reported in 2007, you can see unpersonalized results by appending a parameter, “&pws=0,” to the end of a Google search URL. You can also turn off personalized search from your Google account settings.

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