Los Angeles — Search engine titan Google just announced that it is now bringing personalized search suggestions, a lovely feature fomented on Google.com’s core search, to Google Maps.
Do not remember exactly what street your favorite coffee shop is on? Forget the last few digits of a casual acquaintance’s address? It is in scenarios like these that Google has now got you covered — Personalized search results take into account Google users’ search queries and clicks over time and attempt to surface results the algorithm feels will be more relevant and useful to users. Google opened this to all users in January, not just to those who have enabled Web History for their Google Accounts.
Google explained how it will work in Google Maps:
A post on the LatLong Blog explained this afternoon, “If you are signed in with your Google account and have Web History enabled, personalized suggestions can make searching easier and faster by showing you suggestions based on past searches. Just start typing into the search box as you normally would, and relevant suggestions may appear below, letting you quickly complete your search.”
Moreover, there is a nice gimmick in case you need to cover your tracks or simply clean up the list: See that edit link at the bottom? If you see a suggestion that irks you, you can discard it by literally editing it from the results. Just click the “Edit” link under the suggestions box, which takes you directly to the Web History removals page. Looks like this:
You have to be signed in to your Google account and have Web History enabled for this to work.