One feature I miss from Google Search is being able to query my own search history. I only use it a couple times a year, but it is very handy when I need it. I just used it again, so I thought I'd document how I use it here.
Often I want to revisit a site I found a long time ago, but I don't remember the exact details of the site.
95% of the time, I can successfully find the site again by simply starting a new search (as if searching for the first time). My search strategy tends to be similar, and then I recognize either the title/snippet in the search results, or after opening the first page or so of results.
However, some sites are difficult to find (again) using this method. Often I originally found these sites after multiple iterations of refining my search terms, but I can't repeat the process for some reason.
Here is a specific use case that just happened to me:
I wanted to find this page: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/remote-working-from-overseas-tax-pitfalls-ross-harman/
I remembered visiting the page, and had some vague memory of the contents: enough to know the information would be useful again, but not enough to find it again.
After unsuccessfully searching on Kagi.com (and Google.com), I used my history of searches that Google had saved:
I understand one of Kagi's features is supposed to be privacy and that Kagi only stores minimal user information.
- So this feature could be opt-in
- OR implemented so search queries are only stored locally. Local storage would not be quite as useful, but it would maintain data privacy.
- Perhaps another model could be Kagi only stores encrypted user history; to query the history it must first be downloaded, then queried locally after decrypting.
Some screenshots to help illustrate the search history feature on Google: