Safari History not showing Google Searches

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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

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Answer 1

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begemot2 Author

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28 points

Aug 11, 2010 8:22 PM in response to begemot2

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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Answer 2

begemot2 Author

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28 points

Aug 7, 2010 6:23 AM in response to TildeBee

Thanks for the reply, Bee, but I don't think either of those things are the issue. My history saves for a week, and I empty the cache occasionally. But, again, it is only (seems to be) searches that I do on Google that do no show up on the History, and they don't show up immediately -- that is, they never show up on the History.

Is anyone else experiencing this, or is it local to my computer for some reason?

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Answer 3

begemot2 Author

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28 points

Aug 7, 2010 7:51 AM in response to TildeBee

Thank you again, Bee. I tried both those things. On restarting, the first Google Search I do does show up in my History, but after that, they do not. It is almost as if Safari doesn't recognize the additional searches as having led to a distinct (new) page.

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Answer 4

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.

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Answer 5

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.

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Answer 6

TildeBee

Level 7

31,923 points

Aug 7, 2010 6:59 AM in response to begemot2

It is something on your computer.
To test:
Clear your cache and history.
Restart Safari and make Google searches.
See if they're in the History list.

If not,
Clear all your Google Cookies.
Restart SAfari.
Test again.

To find the culprit requires a process of elimination.

Message was edited by: ~Bee

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Answer 7

begemot2 Author

Level 1

28 points

Aug 7, 2010 10:00 PM in response to TildeBee

I have cleared my history multiple times.

Interestingly, the problem only seems to appear when I do a search from the Google home page. When I search from the tool bar, these searches appear as normal individually on the History.

Have no idea why, but apparently I'm not the only one who has noticed this issue, which has apparently appeared during the last several days.

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Answer 8

TildeBee

Level 7

31,923 points

Aug 11, 2010 9:28 PM in response to begemot2

begemot2 --
Have you read this?
Its from Google's help page.
I typed in "Google History" and got this:
http://www.google.com/support/accounts/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=54066

Here are the first two reasons Google History is not recorded:
+Web History only records your web activity while you're signed in to your Google Account. You'll know that you're signed in if you see your email address in the top right corner of your Google homepage. If you visit webpages or perform searches without signing in, they won't be recorded.+

+Web History doesn't record the addresses of webpages that are prefixed with https://.+

Interesting, eh?
Google is actually preventing history from being recorded from it's home page
unless you're signed into their site. Boo Hiss!!!!!

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Answer 9

begemot2 Author

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28 points

Aug 23, 2010 7:44 PM in response to TildeBee

That is indeed interesting, but that is, I think, for their own web history recording (which appears to be a new feature tied to your gmail account), not the history that your browser (that is, Safari) keeps. And, as I said, Firefox does keep the Google searches one does in the History, so it seems to be something peculiar about the interface between Google and Safari. And specifically, as I mentioned above, the Google homepage and Safari, because searches entered into the toolbar searchbox DO, weirdly, get saved in the browser history.

At any rate, none of this is too big a deal, but it is odd that it just started happening a couple of weeks ago when it never used to be an issue. Since I'm in the habit of doing searches from the Google homepage, and since I frequently like to revisit these searches in my Safari History, it's just a bit of a nuisance, but it can be worked around, of course ...

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Answer 10

Ed_Ok

Level 1

4 points

Sep 2, 2010 10:09 AM in response to begemot2

I have the exact same problem. I even tried that: once Google redirected me to the page I wanted, I accessed another site, then clicked the return button, but still the page wouldn't show in History even if reloaded the page. The only thing that works is to copy the page url and paste it in new tab. Only then would the page show in History. That's pretty weird and annoying...

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Answer 11

m_stol

Level 1

0 points

Sep 6, 2010 12:10 PM in response to begemot2

Performing searches through the Search Box seems to bypass this issue. I prefer using google.ca though, so I installed the PopSearch extension and pointed the google search to that. That works as well.

These are really kludge workarounds though. The history recording algorithm in Safari 5 is definitely broken vis-a-vis Google searches from a Google search page. Neither Firefox nor Camino exhibit this strange behavior and record the search correctly within an properly labeled and retrievable link.

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Answer 12

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

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Answer 13

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.

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Answer 14

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.

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Answer 15

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.

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