On Friday, September 21st, Facebook announced that it was allowing users to view and delete their search histories. Wait, a minute, Facebook tracks your search history and associates it with your profile?That was the first thought that popped into my head when I read this announcement. It’s a well-known fact that other Facebook users cannot see who or what you search for on Facebook, but I’ll bet most users didn’t know that Facebook was tracking that data all along. The new feature will be located under the Activity Log and will be rolled out over the next couple of weeks. The screenshot provided by Facebook shows a log of a user searching for another individual on Facebook.
On Friday, September 21st, Facebook announced that it was allowing users to view and delete their search histories. Wait, a minute, Facebook tracks your search history and associates it with your profile?That was the first thought that popped into my head when I read this announcement. It’s a well-known fact that other Facebook users cannot see who or what you search for on Facebook, but I’ll bet most users didn’t know that Facebook was tracking that data all along. The new feature will be located under the Activity Log and will be rolled out over the next couple of weeks. The screenshot provided by Facebook shows a log of a user searching for another individual on Facebook.
Under the new system, only you would be able to see your search activity unless someone else is browsing Facebook under your login. Many online websites and social media platforms track their users’ every move, but the data is collected anonymously. The fact that Facebook is associating your name with each of your searches means they plan on incorporating searches into the news feed and insights for their advertisers to take advantage of. It remains to be seen if deleting your search results will remove the data from Facebook’s servers, or just your activity log.
Were you aware that Facebook was tracking individuals’ search histories? How do you think Facebook will leverage this data in the future?
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