How to Turn Off Google’s Search, Plus Your World Personal Search Results

Google’s newest feature, Search plus Your World, personalizes Google searches even further based on your Google+ account. When you enter a search query, Google will find results (or recommendations) based on who you follow on Google+ and what they’ve liked, suggested or searched for before. This can be an extremely useful feature, but sometimes you just want clean search results.

Here are some simple, step-by-step instructions on how to disable personal search results.

Disable Personal Search Results One Time

1. Enter a search term.
2. Click the toggle button on the right hand side of your results page (the button with a globe) that says ‘hide personal results.’
    
3. To get it back, simply click the button to the left of it that says ‘show personal results.’

Permanently Disable Personal Search Results

1. Select search settings from the gear icon in the top right corner of the results screen.
    
2. Select  ’Do not use personal results’ under the Personal Results header.
   
   

Remove Behavior-Based Personal Result Rankings

Even before Search Plus your World, though, Google was personalizing your search results based on your query habits so that sites you click more often show up higher for you. Google supplies rather difficult and aggravating instructions on how to turn this feature off, but by simply typing ‘&pws=0′ at the end of your search query, that particular search won’t give any personalized results.