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Level 1

28 points

Safari History not showing Google Searches

Over the past day or two, I have encountered a strange problem: past Google Searches are, for the most part, not showing up on my Safari History. I say for the most part, because once out of every ten times or so for no reason in particular they do. (In addition, some (but not all) of the time, clicks from a Google Search are listed in the History not by their page title, but by the rather lengthy google search url that located them.) There are times when I want to redo a search, and it is always convenient to be able to go back to the History to find the original, so I would like to fix this problem, which I have never had before. As I said, as best as I can tell, it is only an issue with Google searches, other pages that I navigate to show up normally in my history.

I thought it might be a corrupt preferences file, so I removed both Library/Preferences/com.apple.safari.plist and the Library/Safari/History.plist files, but this did not help. I also upgraded from 5.0 to 5.0.1. Any other suggestions? Why would this only be happening with Google (I think, so far)?

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.5.8)

Posted on Aug 6, 2010 9:27 AM

Best reply

begemot2 Author

Level 1

28 points

Posted on Aug 11, 2010 8:22 PM

I still haven't figured this out, and it is still annoying, as I do like to be able to return to previous google searches in my "history." But for some reason, the Safari History does not distinguish between the Google homepage and any and all searches done from the homepage. At least one other person noticed this and posted a similar thread; it seems to have started a week or two ago -- before that all Google searches showed up individually in the Safari History.

Is there anyone who is not experiencing this apparent glitch?

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27 replies

Nov 3, 2010 6:28 AM in response to m_stol

I have Safari 5.0.2 and have the same problem. When I want to redo a search, and go back to check the content results of the original search there is only a blank google page without the search results. This seems to have occurred after I downloaded a safari update. It appears the new update has a bug in it. I sent feedback today, but who knows if they will fix the problem, and there is not way to contact them directly about this. They make it so difficult to get any help on Safari, only through asking questions in forums.

Artistgirl101

Dec 29, 2010 7:52 PM in response to begemot2

Just over a week ago I completely wiped my HD (E & I) and reinstalled everything from scratch. I had trouble with 10.5.7 update way back when it was released (May 09). At that time I archived & installed to get back to 10.5.6.
I kept using 10.5.6 with Safari 3.2.1 and until about a month ago everything worked fine.
About a month ago Safari started freezing (mostly only for a few times at start of session) thus my recent E & I.
I can confirm that Safari 3.2.1 was recording Google search history perfectly normally right up until a week ago. Thus, while people were encountering trouble with the newer version of Safari, version 3.2.1 was recording the Google searches as usual.
Now that I have Safari 5.0.3 I have the same issue as others discuss here. Safari doesn't record any of the Google searches, only the blank Google homepage. It is VERY annoying and I hope Apple plans to rectify soon.
Sorry to other nationalities but probably only Aussies will get this: "Not happy Jan!"

I note the suggestion that the search history is recorded if we use the Google bar in Apple tool bar, but I have never used it and I don't particularly want to start.

On Aussie radio today I here news that Apple has been fined for releasing too much of OUR personal information to third parties. Maybe Apple wants to FORCE (or irritate) us into using that bar because it has better access to our search history. Hmmmmm.

Dec 31, 2010 6:53 PM in response to begemot2

I've discovered that I can use the Google search bar on my Internet Service Provider's home page and the Google search history is recorded in History (just as it used to be in earlier versions of Safari when searching from Google's homepage).

I'd prefer to use Google's homepage but I shall use this option over the Safari bar for the moment, while I consider whether to abandon Safari and download Firefox.

Feb 22, 2011 2:08 PM in response to m_stol

This can be resolved by turning off Google's "Instant Search" feature.

On the Google search page, click on "Search settings" in the top right hand corner. You will be taken to a preferences page. Choose "Do not use Google instant" then save the changes. After that, Google search history from the Google homepage will be recorded and can be browsed without issue.

I have tested this on a 24" iMac running OS X 10.6.6 and Safari 5.0.3. Obviously the preferences disappear if you delete your cookies.

begemot2 Author

Level 1

28 points

Feb 23, 2011 8:00 PM in response to dpg50000a

Why, so it does -- thank you. "Instant Search" was not that necessary, I'm more interested in being able to locate previous searches in my history, and what you suggest does the trick precisely.

Thanks again for that.

Mar 3, 2011 6:25 PM in response to dpg50000a

Thanks, dpg50000a! I was finding this very irritating (URLs visited from Google appearing not under the target URL but as "http://www.google.com/url?..." and turning off Instant Search is exactly what I needed to do.

schoodle

Level 2

189 points

May 24, 2012 2:45 AM in response to dpg50000a

I know this is an old thread, but I recently noticed this very same issue in Safari 5.1.7. Many pages not saved in Safari History, most notably ones I found when starting from Google's homepage. I also get blank pages sometimes. I thought Apple sent out a fix for this already in their most recent Safari update.

I tried the solution listed as being correct, but I cannot find the potion for 'Do not use Google Instant' in the Search Settings on Google's homepage. Perhaps it has been removed?

I have always had Firefox, since Mozilla first started making web browsers, even back in the Thunderbird years, so have decided to just go back to using it as my first choice browser.

dpg50000a wrote:

This can be resolved by turning off Google's "Instant Search" feature.

On the Google search page, click on "Search settings" in the top right hand corner. You will be taken to a preferences page. Choose "Do not use Google instant" then save the changes. After that, Google search history from the Google homepage will be recorded and can be browsed without issue.

I have tested this on a 24" iMac running OS X 10.6.6 and Safari 5.0.3. Obviously the preferences disappear if you delete your cookies.

Dec 28, 2012 10:55 PM in response to schoodle

Hi Schoodle,

Once again resurrecting this old thread.

For me, disabling Instant Search did not prevent this behavior. If you want to try it on your computer and see if you have different results, first visit google.com, then perform a search. The Settings icon doesn't appear until you are on a results page.

For my setup, this problem was caused by the use of SSL searches (through httpS://google.com rather than the non-secure http://google.com). Something about the redirect from the secure google search page to the target link makes the wrong page be entered into the Safari history. Unfortunately, the only way to disable SSL searching now is to sign out of your google account or use a different browser, neither of which are a very appealing option to me.

I filed a bug report with Apple and hopefully this will be resolved in a future update.

sjk1000

Level 1

4 points

Jan 21, 2013 6:43 AM in response to begemot2

Safari's image view for History is so broken. 90% of pages are blank either because of https or google instant search, or whatever else stuffs it up.

asmendel

Level 1

18 points

Jul 6, 2015 6:30 AM in response to dpg50000a

dpg50000a's solution works on MacOS X 10.10.4/Safari 8.0.7. The Google Search Preferences page is at https://www.google.com/preferences. Weirdly, Safari is still showing results-as-I-type after I disabled Google Instant predictions. What has changed, though, is that the search result pages are shown Safari's history. Thanks!

jag157

Level 1

8 points

Sep 8, 2015 3:15 AM in response to asmendel

Tried everything above on my Macbook running OSX 10.10.5 and Safari 8.0.8. Nothing works to retain Google searches in history. Apple really needs to get a grip on Safari.

TildeBee

Level 7

31,917 points

Sep 8, 2015 6:51 AM in response to jag157

I use Duck Duck Go as my search engine. And all pages are retained in Safari. I will not use Google, gmail, or anything else Google, as they're way too interested in my browsing habits.

Safari History not showing Google Searches