Google wants you to turn on Web History, offers cross-platform recent seraches

Google's new privacy policy pulls together usage data from all of its different services: YouTube, Gmail, Docs, etc. and uses it to create a more clear picture of its users. If you have the "Web History" feature of Google Search turned on, Google can collect information about your browsing activity, including pages you visit and searches on Google, information about your search results including personal results, Internet Protocol address, browser type, browser language and more unique identifiers.

"Web History uses the information from your web history or other information you provide us to improve your Google experience across many of our products, such as by improving the quality of your search results and providing recommendations," Google's Privacy FAQ says.

Of course, Google hasn't done the best job of illustrating how it can tangibly improve search for users by retaining their data, so on Monday, Google introduced an improved Mobile search landing page that adds a new one-touch button for Recent Searches.

Any search a user has done for a "place" on any device will show up as a recent search in their mobile query.

"Next time you are heading to a place you have recently searched for, no need to worry if you can’t remember the address or phone number. Just go to Google.com on your smartphone and tap on the 'Recent' icon," said Google Software Engineer Junichi Uekawa on Monday.