The browsing history can be useful to access an important page that we have forgotten and to access your information again; However, it is also very common to delete the history so that other people are not able to see the web pages that you have accessed lately.
If you are going to use a shared computer, it will always be advisable to delete the history so that other people do not see your searches, but what if you delete the history and then want to access a previously visited website again but do not remember what it is called?
Is it possible to recover the browsing history? Although it may seem impossible at first glance, there are alternatives to recover Google’s browsing history using the Windows operating system, certain additional tools and even our Google account.
Don’t worry if you don’t understand much, because in the following article we will explain how you can recover deleted search history on Google step by step.
Recovering deleted search history in Google Chrome can be a challenging task, especially if you haven’t backed up your data or synced it with a Google account. However, there are a few methods you can try. Here’s a tabular guide outlining the steps for each method:
| Method | Steps |
|---|---|
| Check Google Account History | 1. Go to Google My Activity.<br>2. Sign in with your Google account.<br>3. Browse your activity for the deleted search history. |
| Use DNS Cache | 1. Open Command Prompt (cmd) as an administrator.<br>2. Type ipconfig /displaydns and press Enter.<br>3. Look through the output for website addresses (This only works if the computer hasn’t been restarted after the deletion of the search history). |
| Recover with Cookies | 1. Open Chrome and go to Settings.<br>2. Click on ‘Privacy and security’.<br>3. Select ‘Cookies and other site data’.<br>4. Browse through cookies to see if any stored data from previously visited websites is available. |
| Use Data Recovery Software | 1. Download and install a reputable data recovery program.<br>2. Run the program and select the drive where Chrome is installed.<br>3. Follow the software instructions to scan for recoverable files.<br>4. Look for files related to Chrome’s browser history and attempt to recover them. |
| Check Chrome Cache | 1. Type chrome://cache in the Chrome address bar and press Enter.<br>2. Browse through the cached items to find previously visited webpages.<br>3. This method does not provide a comprehensive history but can show some recently visited sites. |
Important Notes:
- The effectiveness of these methods can vary based on factors like browser settings, system configuration, and the time elapsed since the deletion.
- Always consider privacy and legal implications when attempting to recover browser history.
- Regular backups and syncing with a Google account can prevent the loss of important data in the future.
Check the history on another mobile device with your Google account
For better or for worse, it is not possible to recover the deleted browsing history, but it can be verified on another device in case it has the same Google account linked, so if you have a smartphone with a Google account started you will be able to see the activity carried out on the computer.
If you deleted your history on a computer you can go to https://myactivity.google.com/ and check your searches from that page. In case you have also deleted that history, you can review the queries and web browsing from another device that has the same Google account linked .
DNS cache
All the information about the websites we visit is stored in the DNS cache, and among them we can find the browsing history. In order to recover all this information we will have to access CMD or command prompt and type the following command: ipconfig / displaydns.
After writing the command and performing the search, we will be able to see all the history saved in the DNS cache , however, it should be noted that only the web address of the main page will be seen and not the different pages or entries that it could have.
Another aspect to take into account is that if we turn off or restart the computer, this history will be automatically deleted by Windows, so it may not be an effective method if you want to recover very old information.
Google History
This method can be used if you have an active Google account and use Google Chrome as the default browser to perform your internet searches. With Google History we can access a browsing history retrieval and consultation service.
This service is not well known, and therefore it is little used but it is quite useful since it saves each page that we visit, in fact it saves each record even if we visit the same page and it also stores all the navigation information carried out in all the devices linked to One account.
This can be useful to review the history of your children, or even your partner; however, it can also be used to retrieve visited pages which we had forgotten.
To use this service we will have to go to Google History and log in with our Google account and later we will be able to access a calendar where we can retrieve the navigation information for the day we want. Best of all, it doesn’t matter that the browsing history has been deleted, we will still have access to the information.
Best of all, we can configure this service to save web pages as favorites. So that we can have the information of the websites at hand, even after we have cleared the browsing history in Google Chrome.
Other tools
There are a large number of tools developed by third parties that allow us to recover deleted information. A good alternative is Recuva , not only for the ease of recovering history, but we can also recover information from the hard drive. The only thing we need is the path, which in the case of Google Chrome is: C: \ Users \ User \ AppData \ Local \ Google \ Chrome \ User Data \ Default \ Local Storage.
