Fostering accountability through transparency
We believe shedding light on how we handle privacy, security, and access to information empowers users and encourages progress toward a safer, more secure web. To uphold our commitment to transparency, we provide transparency reports and share how content recommendations work across Google products and services.
Championing Transparency Reports
More than a decade ago, we launched our first Transparency Report with the intention of showing users how government policy impacts access to information and informs discussions about the free flow of information online. We publish a range of Transparency Reports that share how Google works—from the way we respond to government requests to how we handle content moderation across our products and services.
More than a decade ago, we launched our first Transparency Report with the intention of showing users how government policy impacts access to information and informs discussions about the free flow of information online. We publish a range of Transparency Reports that share how Google works—from the way we respond to government requests to how we handle content moderation across our products and services.
Explore featured reports
Transparency report
Google Safe Browsing
View how Google's security team is making the web safer by identifying unsafe websites and warning website owners of potential harm.
Transparency report
Government requests to remove content
See the number of requests that we receive from courts and government agencies from around the world to remove information from Google products.
Transparency report
YouTube Community Guidelines enforcements
View the report that provides data on the flags that YouTube receives and how we enforce our policies to maintain a safe and vibrant community.
Sharing how we recommend content
We develop constantly, evolving systems to help users discover relevant content and to personalise results. Recommendations play an important role in how we maintain responsible products and services. They help to reduce the chances that they’ll see harmful and illegal content.
We develop constantly, evolving systems to help users discover relevant content and to personalise results. Recommendations play an important role in how we maintain responsible products and services. They help to reduce the chances that they’ll see harmful and illegal content.
Explore how different factors affect recommendations.
Every product takes a variety of specific parameters, factors, and signals into account when recommending content. Together, they impact your results. View how different products have unique approaches to recommendations and learn how you can adjust your settings.
Google Ads
Google Ads that users see on Google are either personalised or non-personalised. Personalised ads on Google are shown to users based on parameters such as:
- The choices they have made in My Ad Centre, like their preferred ad topics and brands. Users can customise their ads by choosing the topics and brands that they’d like to get more or fewer ads about.
- Information about users, such as age and gender, including information provided by users in their Google Accounts
- Activity saved to their Google Accounts, including things they’ve looked for on Google Search, videos they’ve watched on YouTube, apps they’ve installed on their Android device, and ads or content they’ve interacted with
- Activity from sites that partner with Google that is saved to their Google Account.
While users are signed in to their Google Account, they can turn personalised ads on or off in My Ad Centre. If they're not signed in to their Google Account, they can turn off personalised ads on Search, YouTube and Web by going to Ads Settings and then turning personalised ads on or off within each section.
For more information on how personalised ads work, visit the My Ad Centre help page.
Google Assistant
When users ask a question or tell it to do something, the Google Assistant strives to respond to their requests in the most helpful way possible. For example, Assistant may show recommendations for recipes based on users’ activity across other Google products, YouTube Music personal playlists, liked songs, uploads, or library content, and other personalised Search or Actions on Google results.
When using the Google Assistant, users may get action suggestions that they can select to perform an action or learn more about the response. Action suggestions create a more personalised, helpful experience and may use information that we collect when our services are used, like questions they've previously asked the Google Assistant or events they've created in Google Calendar. Action suggestions may also be based on popular questions related to what other users have asked.
Users can influence which action suggestions they get when they delete past activity or turn personal results on or off. They can also control what activity gets saved to their Google account when they adjust their Activity controls.
For more information on how action suggestions work, visit the Google Assistant Help Centre.
Google Maps
Google Maps is committed to helping you explore the world around you. You can search for areas of interest, things to do or notable locations in Google Maps. You can find places like nearby museums, new restaurants, and popular bars and clubs, as well as ratings and descriptions of these places.
When you search for notable locations or things to do on Google Maps, your results are based primarily on relevance, distance and prominence. These factors are combined to help find the best match for your search. For example, Google algorithms might rank a highly rated business that's further away from you above a lower-rated business that's closer to you.
To choose which places to show you, Google Maps may use data from your Google Account, like your Web & App Activity and device information. This helps you get personalised suggestions about places that you might be interested in.
The content in your community feed is personalised and ranked based on your Web & App Activity and current map area. The community feed can include updates from other Maps users, posts from people that you follow, and recommendations based on your preferences and past activities.
You can adjust your experience or turn off personalised recommendations on Google Maps by changing the settings on the Activity control page. For more details, you can read our Help Centre article on how Google Maps provides recommendations.
Google Play
To help users find apps they’ll have a good experience with, Google Play aims to show them the most relevant results. Google Play first shows high-quality apps that many people use. Multiple factors are considered to decide which apps to show when users search, how many apps to show, and how they appear, including:
- Relevance: We show apps that are relevant to the page users are on or what they searched.
- Quality of the app experience: We show apps that have good in-app user experiences based on several factors, including app design.
- Editorial value: We curate recommendations based on what’s noteworthy and interesting.
- Ads: When developers advertise their apps, we make sure the ads are appropriately identified.
- User experience: We show apps that perform well in the Play Store and that users continue to enjoy after installation.
These factors are weighted differently depending on your device, your preferences, and where you’re looking in Google Play.
Users can manage how their experience is personalised on the Activity Controls of their Google Accounts, where they can turn off personalisation by turning off Web & App Activity or deleting past activity.
For more information on how suggestions work in Google Play, visit the Google Play Help Centre.
Google Search
Google’s ranking systems are designed to sort through hundreds of billions of web pages and other content in our Search index to present the most relevant, useful results in a fraction of a second. To give users the most useful information, Search algorithms look at many factors and signals, including the wording of user queries, relevance and usability of pages, expertise of sources, and location and settings. The weight applied to each factor varies depending on the nature of your query. For example, the freshness of the content plays a bigger role in answering queries about current news topics than it does about dictionary definitions.
The key factors that help determine which results are returned for user queries are the meaning(s) of a query, relevance, quality, usability, user’s settings, and context. You can find out more about them here.
Discover
With Discover, users can get updates for their interests, like their favourite sports team or news site, without searching for them. They can find Discover in different ways: in the Google app, in their browser on google.com for Android phones or tablets and iPhones, and, on some devices, swiping right from the home screen.
To determine what to show in Discover, Google uses information from users’ devices and from other Google products. Google also uses data that's stored in Google Accounts. This data is based on settings which may include Web & App Activity, Location History and Location Settings. Users can change or turn these settings on or off on the Activity controls page. If they don’t want to get personalised stories, users can also turn off personal results in the Data & Privacy section of their Google Account or turn off Discover.
For more information on how to customise what you find in Discover, visit the Google Search Help Centre.
Google Shopping
Shopping ads
By default, ranking of Shopping ads is based on a combination of advertiser bids and relevance, such as a user’s current search terms and activity.
Personalised ads on Google are shown to users based on parameters such as:
- Information about users, such as age and gender, including information provided by users in their Google Accounts
- Activity saved to their Google Accounts, including things they’ve looked for on Google Search or the Shopping tab, videos they’ve watched on YouTube, apps they’ve installed on their Android device, and ads or content they’ve interacted with
- Activity from sites that partner with Google that is saved to their Google Accounts
Free listings
Free listings allow customers to see product results across Google, such as on the Shopping tab, YouTube, Google Search (.com), Google Images, and Google Lens. Unless otherwise indicated, offers are ranked based on our best estimate of a user’s overall shopping experience, considering the relevance of the results to a given query and the experience with the product and/or merchant offering it. Google also uses browsing activity on Web Search, the Shopping tab, and Image Search to help get better results. This activity includes searches and clicks on the Google Search results page.
Past Google activity is also used to make recommendations on items to buy and send reminders based on users' preferences.
For both Shopping ads and free listings, users can manage how their experience is personalised on the Activity Controls of their Google Accounts, where they can turn off personalisation by turning off ad personalisation and Web & App Activity or by deleting past activity.
If they're not signed in to their Google Accounts, they can turn off personalised ads on Search, YouTube and Web by going to Ads Settings and then turning on or off personalised ads within each section.
For more information on recommendations and personalisation, visit the Google Shopping help centre.
Travel
Hotels
When users do a hotel search on Google, they find a list of hotel results and a map that shows those results. By default, the results are sorted by relevance. Dozens of factors are considered in ranking by relevance, including search terms and various hotel aspects, like location, price, user ratings, and reviews. Results may be personalised based on browsing activity, recent searches on Google and previous bookings (for signed-in users with the appropriate account settings).
Users might find one or more paid ads at the top of the results, indicated by an “Ad” badge and the name of the advertiser. These ads are selected and ranked by an auction in which Google considers bids and the quality of the ad. These ads only appear when they’re relevant to a search query and they have no impact on the search results.
To control what they find, users can adjust their search and app activity through the Activity controls of their Google Account where they can turn off personalisation by turning off Web&App Activity or by deleting past activity. They can also adjust Personal results and Gmail settings.
Flights
When users search for flights, Google Flights automatically sorts the results by 'Best Flights', an order that shows the best value by price, length, time of day and other factors. 'Best departing flights' are ranked based on the best trade-off between price and convenience, including factors such as duration, number of stops and airport changes during stopovers. Other departing flights are ranked in ascending order by price, with unpriced itineraries below all others.
Once users select an itinerary, they may see one or more links to book with our airline and OTA partners. Booking links are ranked based on different factors including whether the link has a price, the price offered by the partner on Google Flights and whether the link leads to a mobile-friendly website, if the link is an airline or an online travel agency link, as well as link type and quality.
For more information on how search works for hotels, visit the Hotel tab in the Travel Help Centre. For more information on how we rank the best Google Flights, visit the Flights tab in the Travel Help Centre .
YouTube
YouTube’s recommendation system is constantly evolving, learning every day from over 80 billion pieces of information we call signals, which can include a user’s watch and search history (if enabled), channel subscriptions, and watch time.
YouTube also uses sharing, likes and dislikes, and the “Not interested” and “Don’t recommend” selections. Because everyone has unique viewing habits, the YouTube system compares a user’s viewing habits with those with similar habits, using that information to suggest other content that might be relevant.
The importance of each signal depends on each individual user, and is why our system doesn't follow a set formula. Instead, our system develops dynamically as a user’s viewing habits change.
There are several ways to influence these recommendations and search results. Users can remove or pause specific videos from their watch history or search history through My Google Activity. They can also choose topics in their recommendations on the Home and Watch pages or remove recommended content.
For more information on YouTube Search, visit the YouTube Search page. To learn how YouTube recommendations work, visit YouTube’s recommendation page. To manage your YouTube recommendations and search results, visit the YouTube Help Centre.
Select a PRODUCT
Google Ads
Google Ads that users see on Google are either personalised or non-personalised. Personalised ads on Google are shown to users based on parameters such as:
- The choices they have made in My Ad Centre, like their preferred ad topics and brands. Users can customise their ads by choosing the topics and brands that they’d like to get more or fewer ads about.
- Information about users, such as age and gender, including information provided by users in their Google Accounts
- Activity saved to their Google Accounts, including things they’ve looked for on Google Search, videos they’ve watched on YouTube, apps they’ve installed on their Android device, and ads or content they’ve interacted with
- Activity from sites that partner with Google that is saved to their Google Account.
While users are signed in to their Google Account, they can turn personalised ads on or off in My Ad Centre. If they're not signed in to their Google Account, they can turn off personalised ads on Search, YouTube and Web by going to Ads Settings and then turning personalised ads on or off within each section.
For more information on how personalised ads work, visit the My Ad Centre help page.
Google Assistant
When users ask a question or tell it to do something, the Google Assistant strives to respond to their requests in the most helpful way possible. For example, Assistant may show recommendations for recipes based on users’ activity across other Google products, YouTube Music personal playlists, liked songs, uploads, or library content, and other personalised Search or Actions on Google results.
When using the Google Assistant, users may get action suggestions that they can select to perform an action or learn more about the response. Action suggestions create a more personalised, helpful experience and may use information that we collect when our services are used, like questions they've previously asked the Google Assistant or events they've created in Google Calendar. Action suggestions may also be based on popular questions related to what other users have asked.
Users can influence which action suggestions they get when they delete past activity or turn personal results on or off. They can also control what activity gets saved to their Google account when they adjust their Activity controls.
For more information on how action suggestions work, visit the Google Assistant Help Centre.
Google Maps
Google Maps is committed to helping you explore the world around you. You can search for areas of interest, things to do or notable locations in Google Maps. You can find places like nearby museums, new restaurants, and popular bars and clubs, as well as ratings and descriptions of these places.
When you search for notable locations or things to do on Google Maps, your results are based primarily on relevance, distance and prominence. These factors are combined to help find the best match for your search. For example, Google algorithms might rank a highly rated business that's further away from you above a lower-rated business that's closer to you.
To choose which places to show you, Google Maps may use data from your Google Account, like your Web & App Activity and device information. This helps you get personalised suggestions about places that you might be interested in.
The content in your community feed is personalised and ranked based on your Web & App Activity and current map area. The community feed can include updates from other Maps users, posts from people that you follow, and recommendations based on your preferences and past activities.
You can adjust your experience or turn off personalised recommendations on Google Maps by changing the settings on the Activity control page. For more details, you can read our Help Centre article on how Google Maps provides recommendations.
Google Play
To help users find apps they’ll have a good experience with, Google Play aims to show them the most relevant results. Google Play first shows high-quality apps that many people use. Multiple factors are considered to decide which apps to show when users search, how many apps to show, and how they appear, including:
- Relevance: We show apps that are relevant to the page users are on or what they searched.
- Quality of the app experience: We show apps that have good in-app user experiences based on several factors, including app design.
- Editorial value: We curate recommendations based on what’s noteworthy and interesting.
- Ads: When developers advertise their apps, we make sure the ads are appropriately identified.
- User experience: We show apps that perform well in the Play Store and that users continue to enjoy after installation.
These factors are weighted differently depending on your device, your preferences, and where you’re looking in Google Play.
Users can manage how their experience is personalised on the Activity Controls of their Google Accounts, where they can turn off personalisation by turning off Web & App Activity or deleting past activity.
For more information on how suggestions work in Google Play, visit the Google Play Help Centre.
Google Search
Google’s ranking systems are designed to sort through hundreds of billions of web pages and other content in our Search index to present the most relevant, useful results in a fraction of a second. To give users the most useful information, Search algorithms look at many factors and signals, including the wording of user queries, relevance and usability of pages, expertise of sources, and location and settings. The weight applied to each factor varies depending on the nature of your query. For example, the freshness of the content plays a bigger role in answering queries about current news topics than it does about dictionary definitions.
The key factors that help determine which results are returned for user queries are the meaning(s) of a query, relevance, quality, usability, user’s settings, and context. You can find out more about them here.
Discover
With Discover, users can get updates for their interests, like their favourite sports team or news site, without searching for them. They can find Discover in different ways: in the Google app, in their browser on google.com for Android phones or tablets and iPhones, and, on some devices, swiping right from the home screen.
To determine what to show in Discover, Google uses information from users’ devices and from other Google products. Google also uses data that's stored in Google Accounts. This data is based on settings which may include Web & App Activity, Location History and Location Settings. Users can change or turn these settings on or off on the Activity controls page. If they don’t want to get personalised stories, users can also turn off personal results in the Data & Privacy section of their Google Account or turn off Discover.
For more information on how to customise what you find in Discover, visit the Google Search Help Centre.
Google Shopping
Shopping ads
By default, ranking of Shopping ads is based on a combination of advertiser bids and relevance, such as a user’s current search terms and activity.
Personalised ads on Google are shown to users based on parameters such as:
- Information about users, such as age and gender, including information provided by users in their Google Accounts
- Activity saved to their Google Accounts, including things they’ve looked for on Google Search or the Shopping tab, videos they’ve watched on YouTube, apps they’ve installed on their Android device, and ads or content they’ve interacted with
- Activity from sites that partner with Google that is saved to their Google Accounts
Free listings
Free listings allow customers to see product results across Google, such as on the Shopping tab, YouTube, Google Search (.com), Google Images, and Google Lens. Unless otherwise indicated, offers are ranked based on our best estimate of a user’s overall shopping experience, considering the relevance of the results to a given query and the experience with the product and/or merchant offering it. Google also uses browsing activity on Web Search, the Shopping tab, and Image Search to help get better results. This activity includes searches and clicks on the Google Search results page.
Past Google activity is also used to make recommendations on items to buy and send reminders based on users' preferences.
For both Shopping ads and free listings, users can manage how their experience is personalised on the Activity Controls of their Google Accounts, where they can turn off personalisation by turning off ad personalisation and Web & App Activity or by deleting past activity.
If they're not signed in to their Google Accounts, they can turn off personalised ads on Search, YouTube and Web by going to Ads Settings and then turning on or off personalised ads within each section.
For more information on recommendations and personalisation, visit the Google Shopping help centre.
Travel
Hotels
When users do a hotel search on Google, they find a list of hotel results and a map that shows those results. By default, the results are sorted by relevance. Dozens of factors are considered in ranking by relevance, including search terms and various hotel aspects, like location, price, user ratings, and reviews. Results may be personalised based on browsing activity, recent searches on Google and previous bookings (for signed-in users with the appropriate account settings).
Users might find one or more paid ads at the top of the results, indicated by an “Ad” badge and the name of the advertiser. These ads are selected and ranked by an auction in which Google considers bids and the quality of the ad. These ads only appear when they’re relevant to a search query and they have no impact on the search results.
To control what they find, users can adjust their search and app activity through the Activity controls of their Google Account where they can turn off personalisation by turning off Web&App Activity or by deleting past activity. They can also adjust Personal results and Gmail settings.
Flights
When users search for flights, Google Flights automatically sorts the results by 'Best Flights', an order that shows the best value by price, length, time of day and other factors. 'Best departing flights' are ranked based on the best trade-off between price and convenience, including factors such as duration, number of stops and airport changes during stopovers. Other departing flights are ranked in ascending order by price, with unpriced itineraries below all others.
Once users select an itinerary, they may see one or more links to book with our airline and OTA partners. Booking links are ranked based on different factors including whether the link has a price, the price offered by the partner on Google Flights and whether the link leads to a mobile-friendly website, if the link is an airline or an online travel agency link, as well as link type and quality.
For more information on how search works for hotels, visit the Hotel tab in the Travel Help Centre. For more information on how we rank the best Google Flights, visit the Flights tab in the Travel Help Centre .
YouTube
YouTube’s recommendation system is constantly evolving, learning every day from over 80 billion pieces of information we call signals, which can include a user’s watch and search history (if enabled), channel subscriptions, and watch time.
YouTube also uses sharing, likes and dislikes, and the “Not interested” and “Don’t recommend” selections. Because everyone has unique viewing habits, the YouTube system compares a user’s viewing habits with those with similar habits, using that information to suggest other content that might be relevant.
The importance of each signal depends on each individual user, and is why our system doesn't follow a set formula. Instead, our system develops dynamically as a user’s viewing habits change.
There are several ways to influence these recommendations and search results. Users can remove or pause specific videos from their watch history or search history through My Google Activity. They can also choose topics in their recommendations on the Home and Watch pages or remove recommended content.
For more information on YouTube Search, visit the YouTube Search page. To learn how YouTube recommendations work, visit YouTube’s recommendation page. To manage your YouTube recommendations and search results, visit the YouTube Help Centre.
Google Ads
Google Ads that users see on Google are either personalised or non-personalised. Personalised ads on Google are shown to users based on parameters such as:
- The choices they have made in My Ad Centre, like their preferred ad topics and brands. Users can customise their ads by choosing the topics and brands that they’d like to get more or fewer ads about.
- Information about users, such as age and gender, including information provided by users in their Google Accounts
- Activity saved to their Google Accounts, including things they’ve looked for on Google Search, videos they’ve watched on YouTube, apps they’ve installed on their Android device, and ads or content they’ve interacted with
- Activity from sites that partner with Google that is saved to their Google Account.
While users are signed in to their Google Account, they can turn personalised ads on or off in My Ad Centre. If they're not signed in to their Google Account, they can turn off personalised ads on Search, YouTube and Web by going to Ads Settings and then turning personalised ads on or off within each section.
For more information on how personalised ads work, visit the My Ad Centre help page.
Google Assistant
When users ask a question or tell it to do something, the Google Assistant strives to respond to their requests in the most helpful way possible. For example, Assistant may show recommendations for recipes based on users’ activity across other Google products, YouTube Music personal playlists, liked songs, uploads, or library content, and other personalised Search or Actions on Google results.
When using the Google Assistant, users may get action suggestions that they can select to perform an action or learn more about the response. Action suggestions create a more personalised, helpful experience and may use information that we collect when our services are used, like questions they've previously asked the Google Assistant or events they've created in Google Calendar. Action suggestions may also be based on popular questions related to what other users have asked.
Users can influence which action suggestions they get when they delete past activity or turn personal results on or off. They can also control what activity gets saved to their Google account when they adjust their Activity controls.
For more information on how action suggestions work, visit the Google Assistant Help Centre.
Google Maps
Google Maps is committed to helping you explore the world around you. You can search for areas of interest, things to do or notable locations in Google Maps. You can find places like nearby museums, new restaurants, and popular bars and clubs, as well as ratings and descriptions of these places.
When you search for notable locations or things to do on Google Maps, your results are based primarily on relevance, distance and prominence. These factors are combined to help find the best match for your search. For example, Google algorithms might rank a highly rated business that's further away from you above a lower-rated business that's closer to you.
To choose which places to show you, Google Maps may use data from your Google Account, like your Web & App Activity and device information. This helps you get personalised suggestions about places that you might be interested in.
The content in your community feed is personalised and ranked based on your Web & App Activity and current map area. The community feed can include updates from other Maps users, posts from people that you follow, and recommendations based on your preferences and past activities.
You can adjust your experience or turn off personalised recommendations on Google Maps by changing the settings on the Activity control page. For more details, you can read our Help Centre article on how Google Maps provides recommendations.
Google Play
To help users find apps they’ll have a good experience with, Google Play aims to show them the most relevant results. Google Play first shows high-quality apps that many people use. Multiple factors are considered to decide which apps to show when users search, how many apps to show, and how they appear, including:
- Relevance: We show apps that are relevant to the page users are on or what they searched.
- Quality of the app experience: We show apps that have good in-app user experiences based on several factors, including app design.
- Editorial value: We curate recommendations based on what’s noteworthy and interesting.
- Ads: When developers advertise their apps, we make sure the ads are appropriately identified.
- User experience: We show apps that perform well in the Play Store and that users continue to enjoy after installation.
These factors are weighted differently depending on your device, your preferences, and where you’re looking in Google Play.
Users can manage how their experience is personalised on the Activity Controls of their Google Accounts, where they can turn off personalisation by turning off Web & App Activity or deleting past activity.
For more information on how suggestions work in Google Play, visit the Google Play Help Centre.
Google Search
Google’s ranking systems are designed to sort through hundreds of billions of web pages and other content in our Search index to present the most relevant, useful results in a fraction of a second. To give users the most useful information, Search algorithms look at many factors and signals, including the wording of user queries, relevance and usability of pages, expertise of sources, and location and settings. The weight applied to each factor varies depending on the nature of your query. For example, the freshness of the content plays a bigger role in answering queries about current news topics than it does about dictionary definitions.
The key factors that help determine which results are returned for user queries are the meaning(s) of a query, relevance, quality, usability, user’s settings, and context. You can find out more about them here.
Discover
With Discover, users can get updates for their interests, like their favourite sports team or news site, without searching for them. They can find Discover in different ways: in the Google app, in their browser on google.com for Android phones or tablets and iPhones, and, on some devices, swiping right from the home screen.
To determine what to show in Discover, Google uses information from users’ devices and from other Google products. Google also uses data that's stored in Google Accounts. This data is based on settings which may include Web & App Activity, Location History and Location Settings. Users can change or turn these settings on or off on the Activity controls page. If they don’t want to get personalised stories, users can also turn off personal results in the Data & Privacy section of their Google Account or turn off Discover.
For more information on how to customise what you find in Discover, visit the Google Search Help Centre.
Google Shopping
Shopping ads
By default, ranking of Shopping ads is based on a combination of advertiser bids and relevance, such as a user’s current search terms and activity.
Personalised ads on Google are shown to users based on parameters such as:
- Information about users, such as age and gender, including information provided by users in their Google Accounts
- Activity saved to their Google Accounts, including things they’ve looked for on Google Search or the Shopping tab, videos they’ve watched on YouTube, apps they’ve installed on their Android device, and ads or content they’ve interacted with
- Activity from sites that partner with Google that is saved to their Google Accounts
Free listings
Free listings allow customers to see product results across Google, such as on the Shopping tab, YouTube, Google Search (.com), Google Images, and Google Lens. Unless otherwise indicated, offers are ranked based on our best estimate of a user’s overall shopping experience, considering the relevance of the results to a given query and the experience with the product and/or merchant offering it. Google also uses browsing activity on Web Search, the Shopping tab, and Image Search to help get better results. This activity includes searches and clicks on the Google Search results page.
Past Google activity is also used to make recommendations on items to buy and send reminders based on users' preferences.
For both Shopping ads and free listings, users can manage how their experience is personalised on the Activity Controls of their Google Accounts, where they can turn off personalisation by turning off ad personalisation and Web & App Activity or by deleting past activity.
If they're not signed in to their Google Accounts, they can turn off personalised ads on Search, YouTube and Web by going to Ads Settings and then turning on or off personalised ads within each section.
For more information on recommendations and personalisation, visit the Google Shopping help centre.
Travel
Hotels
When users do a hotel search on Google, they find a list of hotel results and a map that shows those results. By default, the results are sorted by relevance. Dozens of factors are considered in ranking by relevance, including search terms and various hotel aspects, like location, price, user ratings, and reviews. Results may be personalised based on browsing activity, recent searches on Google and previous bookings (for signed-in users with the appropriate account settings).
Users might find one or more paid ads at the top of the results, indicated by an “Ad” badge and the name of the advertiser. These ads are selected and ranked by an auction in which Google considers bids and the quality of the ad. These ads only appear when they’re relevant to a search query and they have no impact on the search results.
To control what they find, users can adjust their search and app activity through the Activity controls of their Google Account where they can turn off personalisation by turning off Web&App Activity or by deleting past activity. They can also adjust Personal results and Gmail settings.
Flights
When users search for flights, Google Flights automatically sorts the results by 'Best Flights', an order that shows the best value by price, length, time of day and other factors. 'Best departing flights' are ranked based on the best trade-off between price and convenience, including factors such as duration, number of stops and airport changes during stopovers. Other departing flights are ranked in ascending order by price, with unpriced itineraries below all others.
Once users select an itinerary, they may see one or more links to book with our airline and OTA partners. Booking links are ranked based on different factors including whether the link has a price, the price offered by the partner on Google Flights and whether the link leads to a mobile-friendly website, if the link is an airline or an online travel agency link, as well as link type and quality.
For more information on how search works for hotels, visit the Hotel tab in the Travel Help Centre. For more information on how we rank the best Google Flights, visit the Flights tab in the Travel Help Centre .
YouTube
YouTube’s recommendation system is constantly evolving, learning every day from over 80 billion pieces of information we call signals, which can include a user’s watch and search history (if enabled), channel subscriptions, and watch time.
YouTube also uses sharing, likes and dislikes, and the “Not interested” and “Don’t recommend” selections. Because everyone has unique viewing habits, the YouTube system compares a user’s viewing habits with those with similar habits, using that information to suggest other content that might be relevant.
The importance of each signal depends on each individual user, and is why our system doesn't follow a set formula. Instead, our system develops dynamically as a user’s viewing habits change.
There are several ways to influence these recommendations and search results. Users can remove or pause specific videos from their watch history or search history through My Google Activity. They can also choose topics in their recommendations on the Home and Watch pages or remove recommended content.
For more information on YouTube Search, visit the YouTube Search page. To learn how YouTube recommendations work, visit YouTube’s recommendation page. To manage your YouTube recommendations and search results, visit the YouTube Help Centre.
Google Ads
Google Ads that users see on Google are either personalised or non-personalised. Personalised ads on Google are shown to users based on parameters such as:
- The choices they have made in My Ad Centre, like their preferred ad topics and brands. Users can customise their ads by choosing the topics and brands that they’d like to get more or fewer ads about.
- Information about users, such as age and gender, including information provided by users in their Google Accounts
- Activity saved to their Google Accounts, including things they’ve looked for on Google Search, videos they’ve watched on YouTube, apps they’ve installed on their Android device, and ads or content they’ve interacted with
- Activity from sites that partner with Google that is saved to their Google Account.
While users are signed in to their Google Account, they can turn personalised ads on or off in My Ad Centre. If they're not signed in to their Google Account, they can turn off personalised ads on Search, YouTube and Web by going to Ads Settings and then turning personalised ads on or off within each section.
For more information on how personalised ads work, visit the My Ad Centre help page.
Google Assistant
When users ask a question or tell it to do something, the Google Assistant strives to respond to their requests in the most helpful way possible. For example, Assistant may show recommendations for recipes based on users’ activity across other Google products, YouTube Music personal playlists, liked songs, uploads, or library content, and other personalised Search or Actions on Google results.
When using the Google Assistant, users may get action suggestions that they can select to perform an action or learn more about the response. Action suggestions create a more personalised, helpful experience and may use information that we collect when our services are used, like questions they've previously asked the Google Assistant or events they've created in Google Calendar. Action suggestions may also be based on popular questions related to what other users have asked.
Users can influence which action suggestions they get when they delete past activity or turn personal results on or off. They can also control what activity gets saved to their Google account when they adjust their Activity controls.
For more information on how action suggestions work, visit the Google Assistant Help Centre.
Google Maps
Google Maps is committed to helping you explore the world around you. You can search for areas of interest, things to do or notable locations in Google Maps. You can find places like nearby museums, new restaurants, and popular bars and clubs, as well as ratings and descriptions of these places.
When you search for notable locations or things to do on Google Maps, your results are based primarily on relevance, distance and prominence. These factors are combined to help find the best match for your search. For example, Google algorithms might rank a highly rated business that's further away from you above a lower-rated business that's closer to you.
To choose which places to show you, Google Maps may use data from your Google Account, like your Web & App Activity and device information. This helps you get personalised suggestions about places that you might be interested in.
The content in your community feed is personalised and ranked based on your Web & App Activity and current map area. The community feed can include updates from other Maps users, posts from people that you follow, and recommendations based on your preferences and past activities.
You can adjust your experience or turn off personalised recommendations on Google Maps by changing the settings on the Activity control page. For more details, you can read our Help Centre article on how Google Maps provides recommendations.
Google Play
To help users find apps they’ll have a good experience with, Google Play aims to show them the most relevant results. Google Play first shows high-quality apps that many people use. Multiple factors are considered to decide which apps to show when users search, how many apps to show, and how they appear, including:
- Relevance: We show apps that are relevant to the page users are on or what they searched.
- Quality of the app experience: We show apps that have good in-app user experiences based on several factors, including app design.
- Editorial value: We curate recommendations based on what’s noteworthy and interesting.
- Ads: When developers advertise their apps, we make sure the ads are appropriately identified.
- User experience: We show apps that perform well in the Play Store and that users continue to enjoy after installation.
These factors are weighted differently depending on your device, your preferences, and where you’re looking in Google Play.
Users can manage how their experience is personalised on the Activity Controls of their Google Accounts, where they can turn off personalisation by turning off Web & App Activity or deleting past activity.
For more information on how suggestions work in Google Play, visit the Google Play Help Centre.
Google Search
Google’s ranking systems are designed to sort through hundreds of billions of web pages and other content in our Search index to present the most relevant, useful results in a fraction of a second. To give users the most useful information, Search algorithms look at many factors and signals, including the wording of user queries, relevance and usability of pages, expertise of sources, and location and settings. The weight applied to each factor varies depending on the nature of your query. For example, the freshness of the content plays a bigger role in answering queries about current news topics than it does about dictionary definitions.
The key factors that help determine which results are returned for user queries are the meaning(s) of a query, relevance, quality, usability, user’s settings, and context. You can find out more about them here.
Discover
With Discover, users can get updates for their interests, like their favourite sports team or news site, without searching for them. They can find Discover in different ways: in the Google app, in their browser on google.com for Android phones or tablets and iPhones, and, on some devices, swiping right from the home screen.
To determine what to show in Discover, Google uses information from users’ devices and from other Google products. Google also uses data that's stored in Google Accounts. This data is based on settings which may include Web & App Activity, Location History and Location Settings. Users can change or turn these settings on or off on the Activity controls page. If they don’t want to get personalised stories, users can also turn off personal results in the Data & Privacy section of their Google Account or turn off Discover.
For more information on how to customise what you find in Discover, visit the Google Search Help Centre.
Google Shopping
Shopping ads
By default, ranking of Shopping ads is based on a combination of advertiser bids and relevance, such as a user’s current search terms and activity.
Personalised ads on Google are shown to users based on parameters such as:
- Information about users, such as age and gender, including information provided by users in their Google Accounts
- Activity saved to their Google Accounts, including things they’ve looked for on Google Search or the Shopping tab, videos they’ve watched on YouTube, apps they’ve installed on their Android device, and ads or content they’ve interacted with
- Activity from sites that partner with Google that is saved to their Google Accounts
Free listings
Free listings allow customers to see product results across Google, such as on the Shopping tab, YouTube, Google Search (.com), Google Images, and Google Lens. Unless otherwise indicated, offers are ranked based on our best estimate of a user’s overall shopping experience, considering the relevance of the results to a given query and the experience with the product and/or merchant offering it. Google also uses browsing activity on Web Search, the Shopping tab, and Image Search to help get better results. This activity includes searches and clicks on the Google Search results page.
Past Google activity is also used to make recommendations on items to buy and send reminders based on users' preferences.
For both Shopping ads and free listings, users can manage how their experience is personalised on the Activity Controls of their Google Accounts, where they can turn off personalisation by turning off ad personalisation and Web & App Activity or by deleting past activity.
If they're not signed in to their Google Accounts, they can turn off personalised ads on Search, YouTube and Web by going to Ads Settings and then turning on or off personalised ads within each section.
For more information on recommendations and personalisation, visit the Google Shopping help centre.
Travel
Hotels
When users do a hotel search on Google, they find a list of hotel results and a map that shows those results. By default, the results are sorted by relevance. Dozens of factors are considered in ranking by relevance, including search terms and various hotel aspects, like location, price, user ratings, and reviews. Results may be personalised based on browsing activity, recent searches on Google and previous bookings (for signed-in users with the appropriate account settings).
Users might find one or more paid ads at the top of the results, indicated by an “Ad” badge and the name of the advertiser. These ads are selected and ranked by an auction in which Google considers bids and the quality of the ad. These ads only appear when they’re relevant to a search query and they have no impact on the search results.
To control what they find, users can adjust their search and app activity through the Activity controls of their Google Account where they can turn off personalisation by turning off Web&App Activity or by deleting past activity. They can also adjust Personal results and Gmail settings.
Flights
When users search for flights, Google Flights automatically sorts the results by 'Best Flights', an order that shows the best value by price, length, time of day and other factors. 'Best departing flights' are ranked based on the best trade-off between price and convenience, including factors such as duration, number of stops and airport changes during stopovers. Other departing flights are ranked in ascending order by price, with unpriced itineraries below all others.
Once users select an itinerary, they may see one or more links to book with our airline and OTA partners. Booking links are ranked based on different factors including whether the link has a price, the price offered by the partner on Google Flights and whether the link leads to a mobile-friendly website, if the link is an airline or an online travel agency link, as well as link type and quality.
For more information on how search works for hotels, visit the Hotel tab in the Travel Help Centre. For more information on how we rank the best Google Flights, visit the Flights tab in the Travel Help Centre .
YouTube
YouTube’s recommendation system is constantly evolving, learning every day from over 80 billion pieces of information we call signals, which can include a user’s watch and search history (if enabled), channel subscriptions, and watch time.
YouTube also uses sharing, likes and dislikes, and the “Not interested” and “Don’t recommend” selections. Because everyone has unique viewing habits, the YouTube system compares a user’s viewing habits with those with similar habits, using that information to suggest other content that might be relevant.
The importance of each signal depends on each individual user, and is why our system doesn't follow a set formula. Instead, our system develops dynamically as a user’s viewing habits change.
There are several ways to influence these recommendations and search results. Users can remove or pause specific videos from their watch history or search history through My Google Activity. They can also choose topics in their recommendations on the Home and Watch pages or remove recommended content.
For more information on YouTube Search, visit the YouTube Search page. To learn how YouTube recommendations work, visit YouTube’s recommendation page. To manage your YouTube recommendations and search results, visit the YouTube Help Centre.
Google Ads
Google Ads that users see on Google are either personalised or non-personalised. Personalised ads on Google are shown to users based on parameters such as:
- The choices they have made in My Ad Centre, like their preferred ad topics and brands. Users can customise their ads by choosing the topics and brands that they’d like to get more or fewer ads about.
- Information about users, such as age and gender, including information provided by users in their Google Accounts
- Activity saved to their Google Accounts, including things they’ve looked for on Google Search, videos they’ve watched on YouTube, apps they’ve installed on their Android device, and ads or content they’ve interacted with
- Activity from sites that partner with Google that is saved to their Google Account.
While users are signed in to their Google Account, they can turn personalised ads on or off in My Ad Centre. If they're not signed in to their Google Account, they can turn off personalised ads on Search, YouTube and Web by going to Ads Settings and then turning personalised ads on or off within each section.
For more information on how personalised ads work, visit the My Ad Centre help page.
Google Assistant
When users ask a question or tell it to do something, the Google Assistant strives to respond to their requests in the most helpful way possible. For example, Assistant may show recommendations for recipes based on users’ activity across other Google products, YouTube Music personal playlists, liked songs, uploads, or library content, and other personalised Search or Actions on Google results.
When using the Google Assistant, users may get action suggestions that they can select to perform an action or learn more about the response. Action suggestions create a more personalised, helpful experience and may use information that we collect when our services are used, like questions they've previously asked the Google Assistant or events they've created in Google Calendar. Action suggestions may also be based on popular questions related to what other users have asked.
Users can influence which action suggestions they get when they delete past activity or turn personal results on or off. They can also control what activity gets saved to their Google account when they adjust their Activity controls.
For more information on how action suggestions work, visit the Google Assistant Help Centre.
Google Maps
Google Maps is committed to helping you explore the world around you. You can search for areas of interest, things to do or notable locations in Google Maps. You can find places like nearby museums, new restaurants, and popular bars and clubs, as well as ratings and descriptions of these places.
When you search for notable locations or things to do on Google Maps, your results are based primarily on relevance, distance and prominence. These factors are combined to help find the best match for your search. For example, Google algorithms might rank a highly rated business that's further away from you above a lower-rated business that's closer to you.
To choose which places to show you, Google Maps may use data from your Google Account, like your Web & App Activity and device information. This helps you get personalised suggestions about places that you might be interested in.
The content in your community feed is personalised and ranked based on your Web & App Activity and current map area. The community feed can include updates from other Maps users, posts from people that you follow, and recommendations based on your preferences and past activities.
You can adjust your experience or turn off personalised recommendations on Google Maps by changing the settings on the Activity control page. For more details, you can read our Help Centre article on how Google Maps provides recommendations.
Google Play
To help users find apps they’ll have a good experience with, Google Play aims to show them the most relevant results. Google Play first shows high-quality apps that many people use. Multiple factors are considered to decide which apps to show when users search, how many apps to show, and how they appear, including:
- Relevance: We show apps that are relevant to the page users are on or what they searched.
- Quality of the app experience: We show apps that have good in-app user experiences based on several factors, including app design.
- Editorial value: We curate recommendations based on what’s noteworthy and interesting.
- Ads: When developers advertise their apps, we make sure the ads are appropriately identified.
- User experience: We show apps that perform well in the Play Store and that users continue to enjoy after installation.
These factors are weighted differently depending on your device, your preferences, and where you’re looking in Google Play.
Users can manage how their experience is personalised on the Activity Controls of their Google Accounts, where they can turn off personalisation by turning off Web & App Activity or deleting past activity.
For more information on how suggestions work in Google Play, visit the Google Play Help Centre.
Google Search
Google’s ranking systems are designed to sort through hundreds of billions of web pages and other content in our Search index to present the most relevant, useful results in a fraction of a second. To give users the most useful information, Search algorithms look at many factors and signals, including the wording of user queries, relevance and usability of pages, expertise of sources, and location and settings. The weight applied to each factor varies depending on the nature of your query. For example, the freshness of the content plays a bigger role in answering queries about current news topics than it does about dictionary definitions.
The key factors that help determine which results are returned for user queries are the meaning(s) of a query, relevance, quality, usability, user’s settings, and context. You can find out more about them here.
Discover
With Discover, users can get updates for their interests, like their favourite sports team or news site, without searching for them. They can find Discover in different ways: in the Google app, in their browser on google.com for Android phones or tablets and iPhones, and, on some devices, swiping right from the home screen.
To determine what to show in Discover, Google uses information from users’ devices and from other Google products. Google also uses data that's stored in Google Accounts. This data is based on settings which may include Web & App Activity, Location History and Location Settings. Users can change or turn these settings on or off on the Activity controls page. If they don’t want to get personalised stories, users can also turn off personal results in the Data & Privacy section of their Google Account or turn off Discover.
For more information on how to customise what you find in Discover, visit the Google Search Help Centre.
Google Shopping
Shopping ads
By default, ranking of Shopping ads is based on a combination of advertiser bids and relevance, such as a user’s current search terms and activity.
Personalised ads on Google are shown to users based on parameters such as:
- Information about users, such as age and gender, including information provided by users in their Google Accounts
- Activity saved to their Google Accounts, including things they’ve looked for on Google Search or the Shopping tab, videos they’ve watched on YouTube, apps they’ve installed on their Android device, and ads or content they’ve interacted with
- Activity from sites that partner with Google that is saved to their Google Accounts
Free listings
Free listings allow customers to see product results across Google, such as on the Shopping tab, YouTube, Google Search (.com), Google Images, and Google Lens. Unless otherwise indicated, offers are ranked based on our best estimate of a user’s overall shopping experience, considering the relevance of the results to a given query and the experience with the product and/or merchant offering it. Google also uses browsing activity on Web Search, the Shopping tab, and Image Search to help get better results. This activity includes searches and clicks on the Google Search results page.
Past Google activity is also used to make recommendations on items to buy and send reminders based on users' preferences.
For both Shopping ads and free listings, users can manage how their experience is personalised on the Activity Controls of their Google Accounts, where they can turn off personalisation by turning off ad personalisation and Web & App Activity or by deleting past activity.
If they're not signed in to their Google Accounts, they can turn off personalised ads on Search, YouTube and Web by going to Ads Settings and then turning on or off personalised ads within each section.
For more information on recommendations and personalisation, visit the Google Shopping help centre.
Travel
Hotels
When users do a hotel search on Google, they find a list of hotel results and a map that shows those results. By default, the results are sorted by relevance. Dozens of factors are considered in ranking by relevance, including search terms and various hotel aspects, like location, price, user ratings, and reviews. Results may be personalised based on browsing activity, recent searches on Google and previous bookings (for signed-in users with the appropriate account settings).
Users might find one or more paid ads at the top of the results, indicated by an “Ad” badge and the name of the advertiser. These ads are selected and ranked by an auction in which Google considers bids and the quality of the ad. These ads only appear when they’re relevant to a search query and they have no impact on the search results.
To control what they find, users can adjust their search and app activity through the Activity controls of their Google Account where they can turn off personalisation by turning off Web&App Activity or by deleting past activity. They can also adjust Personal results and Gmail settings.
Flights
When users search for flights, Google Flights automatically sorts the results by 'Best Flights', an order that shows the best value by price, length, time of day and other factors. 'Best departing flights' are ranked based on the best trade-off between price and convenience, including factors such as duration, number of stops and airport changes during stopovers. Other departing flights are ranked in ascending order by price, with unpriced itineraries below all others.
Once users select an itinerary, they may see one or more links to book with our airline and OTA partners. Booking links are ranked based on different factors including whether the link has a price, the price offered by the partner on Google Flights and whether the link leads to a mobile-friendly website, if the link is an airline or an online travel agency link, as well as link type and quality.
For more information on how search works for hotels, visit the Hotel tab in the Travel Help Centre. For more information on how we rank the best Google Flights, visit the Flights tab in the Travel Help Centre .
YouTube
YouTube’s recommendation system is constantly evolving, learning every day from over 80 billion pieces of information we call signals, which can include a user’s watch and search history (if enabled), channel subscriptions, and watch time.
YouTube also uses sharing, likes and dislikes, and the “Not interested” and “Don’t recommend” selections. Because everyone has unique viewing habits, the YouTube system compares a user’s viewing habits with those with similar habits, using that information to suggest other content that might be relevant.
The importance of each signal depends on each individual user, and is why our system doesn't follow a set formula. Instead, our system develops dynamically as a user’s viewing habits change.
There are several ways to influence these recommendations and search results. Users can remove or pause specific videos from their watch history or search history through My Google Activity. They can also choose topics in their recommendations on the Home and Watch pages or remove recommended content.
For more information on YouTube Search, visit the YouTube Search page. To learn how YouTube recommendations work, visit YouTube’s recommendation page. To manage your YouTube recommendations and search results, visit the YouTube Help Centre.
Google Ads
Google Ads that users see on Google are either personalised or non-personalised. Personalised ads on Google are shown to users based on parameters such as:
- The choices they have made in My Ad Centre, like their preferred ad topics and brands. Users can customise their ads by choosing the topics and brands that they’d like to get more or fewer ads about.
- Information about users, such as age and gender, including information provided by users in their Google Accounts
- Activity saved to their Google Accounts, including things they’ve looked for on Google Search, videos they’ve watched on YouTube, apps they’ve installed on their Android device, and ads or content they’ve interacted with
- Activity from sites that partner with Google that is saved to their Google Account.
While users are signed in to their Google Account, they can turn personalised ads on or off in My Ad Centre. If they're not signed in to their Google Account, they can turn off personalised ads on Search, YouTube and Web by going to Ads Settings and then turning personalised ads on or off within each section.
For more information on how personalised ads work, visit the My Ad Centre help page.
Google Assistant
When users ask a question or tell it to do something, the Google Assistant strives to respond to their requests in the most helpful way possible. For example, Assistant may show recommendations for recipes based on users’ activity across other Google products, YouTube Music personal playlists, liked songs, uploads, or library content, and other personalised Search or Actions on Google results.
When using the Google Assistant, users may get action suggestions that they can select to perform an action or learn more about the response. Action suggestions create a more personalised, helpful experience and may use information that we collect when our services are used, like questions they've previously asked the Google Assistant or events they've created in Google Calendar. Action suggestions may also be based on popular questions related to what other users have asked.
Users can influence which action suggestions they get when they delete past activity or turn personal results on or off. They can also control what activity gets saved to their Google account when they adjust their Activity controls.
For more information on how action suggestions work, visit the Google Assistant Help Centre.
Google Maps
Google Maps is committed to helping you explore the world around you. You can search for areas of interest, things to do or notable locations in Google Maps. You can find places like nearby museums, new restaurants, and popular bars and clubs, as well as ratings and descriptions of these places.
When you search for notable locations or things to do on Google Maps, your results are based primarily on relevance, distance and prominence. These factors are combined to help find the best match for your search. For example, Google algorithms might rank a highly rated business that's further away from you above a lower-rated business that's closer to you.
To choose which places to show you, Google Maps may use data from your Google Account, like your Web & App Activity and device information. This helps you get personalised suggestions about places that you might be interested in.
The content in your community feed is personalised and ranked based on your Web & App Activity and current map area. The community feed can include updates from other Maps users, posts from people that you follow, and recommendations based on your preferences and past activities.
You can adjust your experience or turn off personalised recommendations on Google Maps by changing the settings on the Activity control page. For more details, you can read our Help Centre article on how Google Maps provides recommendations.
Google Play
To help users find apps they’ll have a good experience with, Google Play aims to show them the most relevant results. Google Play first shows high-quality apps that many people use. Multiple factors are considered to decide which apps to show when users search, how many apps to show, and how they appear, including:
- Relevance: We show apps that are relevant to the page users are on or what they searched.
- Quality of the app experience: We show apps that have good in-app user experiences based on several factors, including app design.
- Editorial value: We curate recommendations based on what’s noteworthy and interesting.
- Ads: When developers advertise their apps, we make sure the ads are appropriately identified.
- User experience: We show apps that perform well in the Play Store and that users continue to enjoy after installation.
These factors are weighted differently depending on your device, your preferences, and where you’re looking in Google Play.
Users can manage how their experience is personalised on the Activity Controls of their Google Accounts, where they can turn off personalisation by turning off Web & App Activity or deleting past activity.
For more information on how suggestions work in Google Play, visit the Google Play Help Centre.
Google Search
Google’s ranking systems are designed to sort through hundreds of billions of web pages and other content in our Search index to present the most relevant, useful results in a fraction of a second. To give users the most useful information, Search algorithms look at many factors and signals, including the wording of user queries, relevance and usability of pages, expertise of sources, and location and settings. The weight applied to each factor varies depending on the nature of your query. For example, the freshness of the content plays a bigger role in answering queries about current news topics than it does about dictionary definitions.
The key factors that help determine which results are returned for user queries are the meaning(s) of a query, relevance, quality, usability, user’s settings, and context. You can find out more about them here.
Discover
With Discover, users can get updates for their interests, like their favourite sports team or news site, without searching for them. They can find Discover in different ways: in the Google app, in their browser on google.com for Android phones or tablets and iPhones, and, on some devices, swiping right from the home screen.
To determine what to show in Discover, Google uses information from users’ devices and from other Google products. Google also uses data that's stored in Google Accounts. This data is based on settings which may include Web & App Activity, Location History and Location Settings. Users can change or turn these settings on or off on the Activity controls page. If they don’t want to get personalised stories, users can also turn off personal results in the Data & Privacy section of their Google Account or turn off Discover.
For more information on how to customise what you find in Discover, visit the Google Search Help Centre.
Google Shopping
Shopping ads
By default, ranking of Shopping ads is based on a combination of advertiser bids and relevance, such as a user’s current search terms and activity.
Personalised ads on Google are shown to users based on parameters such as:
- Information about users, such as age and gender, including information provided by users in their Google Accounts
- Activity saved to their Google Accounts, including things they’ve looked for on Google Search or the Shopping tab, videos they’ve watched on YouTube, apps they’ve installed on their Android device, and ads or content they’ve interacted with
- Activity from sites that partner with Google that is saved to their Google Accounts
Free listings
Free listings allow customers to see product results across Google, such as on the Shopping tab, YouTube, Google Search (.com), Google Images, and Google Lens. Unless otherwise indicated, offers are ranked based on our best estimate of a user’s overall shopping experience, considering the relevance of the results to a given query and the experience with the product and/or merchant offering it. Google also uses browsing activity on Web Search, the Shopping tab, and Image Search to help get better results. This activity includes searches and clicks on the Google Search results page.
Past Google activity is also used to make recommendations on items to buy and send reminders based on users' preferences.
For both Shopping ads and free listings, users can manage how their experience is personalised on the Activity Controls of their Google Accounts, where they can turn off personalisation by turning off ad personalisation and Web & App Activity or by deleting past activity.
If they're not signed in to their Google Accounts, they can turn off personalised ads on Search, YouTube and Web by going to Ads Settings and then turning on or off personalised ads within each section.
For more information on recommendations and personalisation, visit the Google Shopping help centre.
Travel
Hotels
When users do a hotel search on Google, they find a list of hotel results and a map that shows those results. By default, the results are sorted by relevance. Dozens of factors are considered in ranking by relevance, including search terms and various hotel aspects, like location, price, user ratings, and reviews. Results may be personalised based on browsing activity, recent searches on Google and previous bookings (for signed-in users with the appropriate account settings).
Users might find one or more paid ads at the top of the results, indicated by an “Ad” badge and the name of the advertiser. These ads are selected and ranked by an auction in which Google considers bids and the quality of the ad. These ads only appear when they’re relevant to a search query and they have no impact on the search results.
To control what they find, users can adjust their search and app activity through the Activity controls of their Google Account where they can turn off personalisation by turning off Web&App Activity or by deleting past activity. They can also adjust Personal results and Gmail settings.
Flights
When users search for flights, Google Flights automatically sorts the results by 'Best Flights', an order that shows the best value by price, length, time of day and other factors. 'Best departing flights' are ranked based on the best trade-off between price and convenience, including factors such as duration, number of stops and airport changes during stopovers. Other departing flights are ranked in ascending order by price, with unpriced itineraries below all others.
Once users select an itinerary, they may see one or more links to book with our airline and OTA partners. Booking links are ranked based on different factors including whether the link has a price, the price offered by the partner on Google Flights and whether the link leads to a mobile-friendly website, if the link is an airline or an online travel agency link, as well as link type and quality.
For more information on how search works for hotels, visit the Hotel tab in the Travel Help Centre. For more information on how we rank the best Google Flights, visit the Flights tab in the Travel Help Centre .
YouTube
YouTube’s recommendation system is constantly evolving, learning every day from over 80 billion pieces of information we call signals, which can include a user’s watch and search history (if enabled), channel subscriptions, and watch time.
YouTube also uses sharing, likes and dislikes, and the “Not interested” and “Don’t recommend” selections. Because everyone has unique viewing habits, the YouTube system compares a user’s viewing habits with those with similar habits, using that information to suggest other content that might be relevant.
The importance of each signal depends on each individual user, and is why our system doesn't follow a set formula. Instead, our system develops dynamically as a user’s viewing habits change.
There are several ways to influence these recommendations and search results. Users can remove or pause specific videos from their watch history or search history through My Google Activity. They can also choose topics in their recommendations on the Home and Watch pages or remove recommended content.
For more information on YouTube Search, visit the YouTube Search page. To learn how YouTube recommendations work, visit YouTube’s recommendation page. To manage your YouTube recommendations and search results, visit the YouTube Help Centre.
Google Ads
Google Ads that users see on Google are either personalised or non-personalised. Personalised ads on Google are shown to users based on parameters such as:
- The choices they have made in My Ad Centre, like their preferred ad topics and brands. Users can customise their ads by choosing the topics and brands that they’d like to get more or fewer ads about.
- Information about users, such as age and gender, including information provided by users in their Google Accounts
- Activity saved to their Google Accounts, including things they’ve looked for on Google Search, videos they’ve watched on YouTube, apps they’ve installed on their Android device, and ads or content they’ve interacted with
- Activity from sites that partner with Google that is saved to their Google Account.
While users are signed in to their Google Account, they can turn personalised ads on or off in My Ad Centre. If they're not signed in to their Google Account, they can turn off personalised ads on Search, YouTube and Web by going to Ads Settings and then turning personalised ads on or off within each section.
For more information on how personalised ads work, visit the My Ad Centre help page.
Google Assistant
When users ask a question or tell it to do something, the Google Assistant strives to respond to their requests in the most helpful way possible. For example, Assistant may show recommendations for recipes based on users’ activity across other Google products, YouTube Music personal playlists, liked songs, uploads, or library content, and other personalised Search or Actions on Google results.
When using the Google Assistant, users may get action suggestions that they can select to perform an action or learn more about the response. Action suggestions create a more personalised, helpful experience and may use information that we collect when our services are used, like questions they've previously asked the Google Assistant or events they've created in Google Calendar. Action suggestions may also be based on popular questions related to what other users have asked.
Users can influence which action suggestions they get when they delete past activity or turn personal results on or off. They can also control what activity gets saved to their Google account when they adjust their Activity controls.
For more information on how action suggestions work, visit the Google Assistant Help Centre.
Google Maps
Google Maps is committed to helping you explore the world around you. You can search for areas of interest, things to do or notable locations in Google Maps. You can find places like nearby museums, new restaurants, and popular bars and clubs, as well as ratings and descriptions of these places.
When you search for notable locations or things to do on Google Maps, your results are based primarily on relevance, distance and prominence. These factors are combined to help find the best match for your search. For example, Google algorithms might rank a highly rated business that's further away from you above a lower-rated business that's closer to you.
To choose which places to show you, Google Maps may use data from your Google Account, like your Web & App Activity and device information. This helps you get personalised suggestions about places that you might be interested in.
The content in your community feed is personalised and ranked based on your Web & App Activity and current map area. The community feed can include updates from other Maps users, posts from people that you follow, and recommendations based on your preferences and past activities.
You can adjust your experience or turn off personalised recommendations on Google Maps by changing the settings on the Activity control page. For more details, you can read our Help Centre article on how Google Maps provides recommendations.
Google Play
To help users find apps they’ll have a good experience with, Google Play aims to show them the most relevant results. Google Play first shows high-quality apps that many people use. Multiple factors are considered to decide which apps to show when users search, how many apps to show, and how they appear, including:
- Relevance: We show apps that are relevant to the page users are on or what they searched.
- Quality of the app experience: We show apps that have good in-app user experiences based on several factors, including app design.
- Editorial value: We curate recommendations based on what’s noteworthy and interesting.
- Ads: When developers advertise their apps, we make sure the ads are appropriately identified.
- User experience: We show apps that perform well in the Play Store and that users continue to enjoy after installation.
These factors are weighted differently depending on your device, your preferences, and where you’re looking in Google Play.
Users can manage how their experience is personalised on the Activity Controls of their Google Accounts, where they can turn off personalisation by turning off Web & App Activity or deleting past activity.
For more information on how suggestions work in Google Play, visit the Google Play Help Centre.
Google Search
Google’s ranking systems are designed to sort through hundreds of billions of web pages and other content in our Search index to present the most relevant, useful results in a fraction of a second. To give users the most useful information, Search algorithms look at many factors and signals, including the wording of user queries, relevance and usability of pages, expertise of sources, and location and settings. The weight applied to each factor varies depending on the nature of your query. For example, the freshness of the content plays a bigger role in answering queries about current news topics than it does about dictionary definitions.
The key factors that help determine which results are returned for user queries are the meaning(s) of a query, relevance, quality, usability, user’s settings, and context. You can find out more about them here.
Discover
With Discover, users can get updates for their interests, like their favourite sports team or news site, without searching for them. They can find Discover in different ways: in the Google app, in their browser on google.com for Android phones or tablets and iPhones, and, on some devices, swiping right from the home screen.
To determine what to show in Discover, Google uses information from users’ devices and from other Google products. Google also uses data that's stored in Google Accounts. This data is based on settings which may include Web & App Activity, Location History and Location Settings. Users can change or turn these settings on or off on the Activity controls page. If they don’t want to get personalised stories, users can also turn off personal results in the Data & Privacy section of their Google Account or turn off Discover.
For more information on how to customise what you find in Discover, visit the Google Search Help Centre.
Google Shopping
Shopping ads
By default, ranking of Shopping ads is based on a combination of advertiser bids and relevance, such as a user’s current search terms and activity.
Personalised ads on Google are shown to users based on parameters such as:
- Information about users, such as age and gender, including information provided by users in their Google Accounts
- Activity saved to their Google Accounts, including things they’ve looked for on Google Search or the Shopping tab, videos they’ve watched on YouTube, apps they’ve installed on their Android device, and ads or content they’ve interacted with
- Activity from sites that partner with Google that is saved to their Google Accounts
Free listings
Free listings allow customers to see product results across Google, such as on the Shopping tab, YouTube, Google Search (.com), Google Images, and Google Lens. Unless otherwise indicated, offers are ranked based on our best estimate of a user’s overall shopping experience, considering the relevance of the results to a given query and the experience with the product and/or merchant offering it. Google also uses browsing activity on Web Search, the Shopping tab, and Image Search to help get better results. This activity includes searches and clicks on the Google Search results page.
Past Google activity is also used to make recommendations on items to buy and send reminders based on users' preferences.
For both Shopping ads and free listings, users can manage how their experience is personalised on the Activity Controls of their Google Accounts, where they can turn off personalisation by turning off ad personalisation and Web & App Activity or by deleting past activity.
If they're not signed in to their Google Accounts, they can turn off personalised ads on Search, YouTube and Web by going to Ads Settings and then turning on or off personalised ads within each section.
For more information on recommendations and personalisation, visit the Google Shopping help centre.
Travel
Hotels
When users do a hotel search on Google, they find a list of hotel results and a map that shows those results. By default, the results are sorted by relevance. Dozens of factors are considered in ranking by relevance, including search terms and various hotel aspects, like location, price, user ratings, and reviews. Results may be personalised based on browsing activity, recent searches on Google and previous bookings (for signed-in users with the appropriate account settings).
Users might find one or more paid ads at the top of the results, indicated by an “Ad” badge and the name of the advertiser. These ads are selected and ranked by an auction in which Google considers bids and the quality of the ad. These ads only appear when they’re relevant to a search query and they have no impact on the search results.
To control what they find, users can adjust their search and app activity through the Activity controls of their Google Account where they can turn off personalisation by turning off Web&App Activity or by deleting past activity. They can also adjust Personal results and Gmail settings.
Flights
When users search for flights, Google Flights automatically sorts the results by 'Best Flights', an order that shows the best value by price, length, time of day and other factors. 'Best departing flights' are ranked based on the best trade-off between price and convenience, including factors such as duration, number of stops and airport changes during stopovers. Other departing flights are ranked in ascending order by price, with unpriced itineraries below all others.
Once users select an itinerary, they may see one or more links to book with our airline and OTA partners. Booking links are ranked based on different factors including whether the link has a price, the price offered by the partner on Google Flights and whether the link leads to a mobile-friendly website, if the link is an airline or an online travel agency link, as well as link type and quality.
For more information on how search works for hotels, visit the Hotel tab in the Travel Help Centre. For more information on how we rank the best Google Flights, visit the Flights tab in the Travel Help Centre .
YouTube
YouTube’s recommendation system is constantly evolving, learning every day from over 80 billion pieces of information we call signals, which can include a user’s watch and search history (if enabled), channel subscriptions, and watch time.
YouTube also uses sharing, likes and dislikes, and the “Not interested” and “Don’t recommend” selections. Because everyone has unique viewing habits, the YouTube system compares a user’s viewing habits with those with similar habits, using that information to suggest other content that might be relevant.
The importance of each signal depends on each individual user, and is why our system doesn't follow a set formula. Instead, our system develops dynamically as a user’s viewing habits change.
There are several ways to influence these recommendations and search results. Users can remove or pause specific videos from their watch history or search history through My Google Activity. They can also choose topics in their recommendations on the Home and Watch pages or remove recommended content.
For more information on YouTube Search, visit the YouTube Search page. To learn how YouTube recommendations work, visit YouTube’s recommendation page. To manage your YouTube recommendations and search results, visit the YouTube Help Centre.
Google Ads
Google Ads that users see on Google are either personalised or non-personalised. Personalised ads on Google are shown to users based on parameters such as:
- The choices they have made in My Ad Centre, like their preferred ad topics and brands. Users can customise their ads by choosing the topics and brands that they’d like to get more or fewer ads about.
- Information about users, such as age and gender, including information provided by users in their Google Accounts
- Activity saved to their Google Accounts, including things they’ve looked for on Google Search, videos they’ve watched on YouTube, apps they’ve installed on their Android device, and ads or content they’ve interacted with
- Activity from sites that partner with Google that is saved to their Google Account.
While users are signed in to their Google Account, they can turn personalised ads on or off in My Ad Centre. If they're not signed in to their Google Account, they can turn off personalised ads on Search, YouTube and Web by going to Ads Settings and then turning personalised ads on or off within each section.
For more information on how personalised ads work, visit the My Ad Centre help page.
Google Assistant
When users ask a question or tell it to do something, the Google Assistant strives to respond to their requests in the most helpful way possible. For example, Assistant may show recommendations for recipes based on users’ activity across other Google products, YouTube Music personal playlists, liked songs, uploads, or library content, and other personalised Search or Actions on Google results.
When using the Google Assistant, users may get action suggestions that they can select to perform an action or learn more about the response. Action suggestions create a more personalised, helpful experience and may use information that we collect when our services are used, like questions they've previously asked the Google Assistant or events they've created in Google Calendar. Action suggestions may also be based on popular questions related to what other users have asked.
Users can influence which action suggestions they get when they delete past activity or turn personal results on or off. They can also control what activity gets saved to their Google account when they adjust their Activity controls.
For more information on how action suggestions work, visit the Google Assistant Help Centre.
Google Maps
Google Maps is committed to helping you explore the world around you. You can search for areas of interest, things to do or notable locations in Google Maps. You can find places like nearby museums, new restaurants, and popular bars and clubs, as well as ratings and descriptions of these places.
When you search for notable locations or things to do on Google Maps, your results are based primarily on relevance, distance and prominence. These factors are combined to help find the best match for your search. For example, Google algorithms might rank a highly rated business that's further away from you above a lower-rated business that's closer to you.
To choose which places to show you, Google Maps may use data from your Google Account, like your Web & App Activity and device information. This helps you get personalised suggestions about places that you might be interested in.
The content in your community feed is personalised and ranked based on your Web & App Activity and current map area. The community feed can include updates from other Maps users, posts from people that you follow, and recommendations based on your preferences and past activities.
You can adjust your experience or turn off personalised recommendations on Google Maps by changing the settings on the Activity control page. For more details, you can read our Help Centre article on how Google Maps provides recommendations.
Google Play
To help users find apps they’ll have a good experience with, Google Play aims to show them the most relevant results. Google Play first shows high-quality apps that many people use. Multiple factors are considered to decide which apps to show when users search, how many apps to show, and how they appear, including:
- Relevance: We show apps that are relevant to the page users are on or what they searched.
- Quality of the app experience: We show apps that have good in-app user experiences based on several factors, including app design.
- Editorial value: We curate recommendations based on what’s noteworthy and interesting.
- Ads: When developers advertise their apps, we make sure the ads are appropriately identified.
- User experience: We show apps that perform well in the Play Store and that users continue to enjoy after installation.
These factors are weighted differently depending on your device, your preferences, and where you’re looking in Google Play.
Users can manage how their experience is personalised on the Activity Controls of their Google Accounts, where they can turn off personalisation by turning off Web & App Activity or deleting past activity.
For more information on how suggestions work in Google Play, visit the Google Play Help Centre.
Google Search
Google’s ranking systems are designed to sort through hundreds of billions of web pages and other content in our Search index to present the most relevant, useful results in a fraction of a second. To give users the most useful information, Search algorithms look at many factors and signals, including the wording of user queries, relevance and usability of pages, expertise of sources, and location and settings. The weight applied to each factor varies depending on the nature of your query. For example, the freshness of the content plays a bigger role in answering queries about current news topics than it does about dictionary definitions.
The key factors that help determine which results are returned for user queries are the meaning(s) of a query, relevance, quality, usability, user’s settings, and context. You can find out more about them here.
Discover
With Discover, users can get updates for their interests, like their favourite sports team or news site, without searching for them. They can find Discover in different ways: in the Google app, in their browser on google.com for Android phones or tablets and iPhones, and, on some devices, swiping right from the home screen.
To determine what to show in Discover, Google uses information from users’ devices and from other Google products. Google also uses data that's stored in Google Accounts. This data is based on settings which may include Web & App Activity, Location History and Location Settings. Users can change or turn these settings on or off on the Activity controls page. If they don’t want to get personalised stories, users can also turn off personal results in the Data & Privacy section of their Google Account or turn off Discover.
For more information on how to customise what you find in Discover, visit the Google Search Help Centre.
Google Shopping
Shopping ads
By default, ranking of Shopping ads is based on a combination of advertiser bids and relevance, such as a user’s current search terms and activity.
Personalised ads on Google are shown to users based on parameters such as:
- Information about users, such as age and gender, including information provided by users in their Google Accounts
- Activity saved to their Google Accounts, including things they’ve looked for on Google Search or the Shopping tab, videos they’ve watched on YouTube, apps they’ve installed on their Android device, and ads or content they’ve interacted with
- Activity from sites that partner with Google that is saved to their Google Accounts
Free listings
Free listings allow customers to see product results across Google, such as on the Shopping tab, YouTube, Google Search (.com), Google Images, and Google Lens. Unless otherwise indicated, offers are ranked based on our best estimate of a user’s overall shopping experience, considering the relevance of the results to a given query and the experience with the product and/or merchant offering it. Google also uses browsing activity on Web Search, the Shopping tab, and Image Search to help get better results. This activity includes searches and clicks on the Google Search results page.
Past Google activity is also used to make recommendations on items to buy and send reminders based on users' preferences.
For both Shopping ads and free listings, users can manage how their experience is personalised on the Activity Controls of their Google Accounts, where they can turn off personalisation by turning off ad personalisation and Web & App Activity or by deleting past activity.
If they're not signed in to their Google Accounts, they can turn off personalised ads on Search, YouTube and Web by going to Ads Settings and then turning on or off personalised ads within each section.
For more information on recommendations and personalisation, visit the Google Shopping help centre.
Travel
Hotels
When users do a hotel search on Google, they find a list of hotel results and a map that shows those results. By default, the results are sorted by relevance. Dozens of factors are considered in ranking by relevance, including search terms and various hotel aspects, like location, price, user ratings, and reviews. Results may be personalised based on browsing activity, recent searches on Google and previous bookings (for signed-in users with the appropriate account settings).
Users might find one or more paid ads at the top of the results, indicated by an “Ad” badge and the name of the advertiser. These ads are selected and ranked by an auction in which Google considers bids and the quality of the ad. These ads only appear when they’re relevant to a search query and they have no impact on the search results.
To control what they find, users can adjust their search and app activity through the Activity controls of their Google Account where they can turn off personalisation by turning off Web&App Activity or by deleting past activity. They can also adjust Personal results and Gmail settings.
Flights
When users search for flights, Google Flights automatically sorts the results by 'Best Flights', an order that shows the best value by price, length, time of day and other factors. 'Best departing flights' are ranked based on the best trade-off between price and convenience, including factors such as duration, number of stops and airport changes during stopovers. Other departing flights are ranked in ascending order by price, with unpriced itineraries below all others.
Once users select an itinerary, they may see one or more links to book with our airline and OTA partners. Booking links are ranked based on different factors including whether the link has a price, the price offered by the partner on Google Flights and whether the link leads to a mobile-friendly website, if the link is an airline or an online travel agency link, as well as link type and quality.
For more information on how search works for hotels, visit the Hotel tab in the Travel Help Centre. For more information on how we rank the best Google Flights, visit the Flights tab in the Travel Help Centre .
YouTube
YouTube’s recommendation system is constantly evolving, learning every day from over 80 billion pieces of information we call signals, which can include a user’s watch and search history (if enabled), channel subscriptions, and watch time.
YouTube also uses sharing, likes and dislikes, and the “Not interested” and “Don’t recommend” selections. Because everyone has unique viewing habits, the YouTube system compares a user’s viewing habits with those with similar habits, using that information to suggest other content that might be relevant.
The importance of each signal depends on each individual user, and is why our system doesn't follow a set formula. Instead, our system develops dynamically as a user’s viewing habits change.
There are several ways to influence these recommendations and search results. Users can remove or pause specific videos from their watch history or search history through My Google Activity. They can also choose topics in their recommendations on the Home and Watch pages or remove recommended content.
For more information on YouTube Search, visit the YouTube Search page. To learn how YouTube recommendations work, visit YouTube’s recommendation page. To manage your YouTube recommendations and search results, visit the YouTube Help Centre.
Google Ads
Google Ads that users see on Google are either personalised or non-personalised. Personalised ads on Google are shown to users based on parameters such as:
- The choices they have made in My Ad Centre, like their preferred ad topics and brands. Users can customise their ads by choosing the topics and brands that they’d like to get more or fewer ads about.
- Information about users, such as age and gender, including information provided by users in their Google Accounts
- Activity saved to their Google Accounts, including things they’ve looked for on Google Search, videos they’ve watched on YouTube, apps they’ve installed on their Android device, and ads or content they’ve interacted with
- Activity from sites that partner with Google that is saved to their Google Account.
While users are signed in to their Google Account, they can turn personalised ads on or off in My Ad Centre. If they're not signed in to their Google Account, they can turn off personalised ads on Search, YouTube and Web by going to Ads Settings and then turning personalised ads on or off within each section.
For more information on how personalised ads work, visit the My Ad Centre help page.
Google Assistant
When users ask a question or tell it to do something, the Google Assistant strives to respond to their requests in the most helpful way possible. For example, Assistant may show recommendations for recipes based on users’ activity across other Google products, YouTube Music personal playlists, liked songs, uploads, or library content, and other personalised Search or Actions on Google results.
When using the Google Assistant, users may get action suggestions that they can select to perform an action or learn more about the response. Action suggestions create a more personalised, helpful experience and may use information that we collect when our services are used, like questions they've previously asked the Google Assistant or events they've created in Google Calendar. Action suggestions may also be based on popular questions related to what other users have asked.
Users can influence which action suggestions they get when they delete past activity or turn personal results on or off. They can also control what activity gets saved to their Google account when they adjust their Activity controls.
For more information on how action suggestions work, visit the Google Assistant Help Centre.
Google Maps
Google Maps is committed to helping you explore the world around you. You can search for areas of interest, things to do or notable locations in Google Maps. You can find places like nearby museums, new restaurants, and popular bars and clubs, as well as ratings and descriptions of these places.
When you search for notable locations or things to do on Google Maps, your results are based primarily on relevance, distance and prominence. These factors are combined to help find the best match for your search. For example, Google algorithms might rank a highly rated business that's further away from you above a lower-rated business that's closer to you.
To choose which places to show you, Google Maps may use data from your Google Account, like your Web & App Activity and device information. This helps you get personalised suggestions about places that you might be interested in.
The content in your community feed is personalised and ranked based on your Web & App Activity and current map area. The community feed can include updates from other Maps users, posts from people that you follow, and recommendations based on your preferences and past activities.
You can adjust your experience or turn off personalised recommendations on Google Maps by changing the settings on the Activity control page. For more details, you can read our Help Centre article on how Google Maps provides recommendations.
Google Play
To help users find apps they’ll have a good experience with, Google Play aims to show them the most relevant results. Google Play first shows high-quality apps that many people use. Multiple factors are considered to decide which apps to show when users search, how many apps to show, and how they appear, including:
- Relevance: We show apps that are relevant to the page users are on or what they searched.
- Quality of the app experience: We show apps that have good in-app user experiences based on several factors, including app design.
- Editorial value: We curate recommendations based on what’s noteworthy and interesting.
- Ads: When developers advertise their apps, we make sure the ads are appropriately identified.
- User experience: We show apps that perform well in the Play Store and that users continue to enjoy after installation.
These factors are weighted differently depending on your device, your preferences, and where you’re looking in Google Play.
Users can manage how their experience is personalised on the Activity Controls of their Google Accounts, where they can turn off personalisation by turning off Web & App Activity or deleting past activity.
For more information on how suggestions work in Google Play, visit the Google Play Help Centre.
Google Search
Google’s ranking systems are designed to sort through hundreds of billions of web pages and other content in our Search index to present the most relevant, useful results in a fraction of a second. To give users the most useful information, Search algorithms look at many factors and signals, including the wording of user queries, relevance and usability of pages, expertise of sources, and location and settings. The weight applied to each factor varies depending on the nature of your query. For example, the freshness of the content plays a bigger role in answering queries about current news topics than it does about dictionary definitions.
The key factors that help determine which results are returned for user queries are the meaning(s) of a query, relevance, quality, usability, user’s settings, and context. You can find out more about them here.
Discover
With Discover, users can get updates for their interests, like their favourite sports team or news site, without searching for them. They can find Discover in different ways: in the Google app, in their browser on google.com for Android phones or tablets and iPhones, and, on some devices, swiping right from the home screen.
To determine what to show in Discover, Google uses information from users’ devices and from other Google products. Google also uses data that's stored in Google Accounts. This data is based on settings which may include Web & App Activity, Location History and Location Settings. Users can change or turn these settings on or off on the Activity controls page. If they don’t want to get personalised stories, users can also turn off personal results in the Data & Privacy section of their Google Account or turn off Discover.
For more information on how to customise what you find in Discover, visit the Google Search Help Centre.
Google Shopping
Shopping ads
By default, ranking of Shopping ads is based on a combination of advertiser bids and relevance, such as a user’s current search terms and activity.
Personalised ads on Google are shown to users based on parameters such as:
- Information about users, such as age and gender, including information provided by users in their Google Accounts
- Activity saved to their Google Accounts, including things they’ve looked for on Google Search or the Shopping tab, videos they’ve watched on YouTube, apps they’ve installed on their Android device, and ads or content they’ve interacted with
- Activity from sites that partner with Google that is saved to their Google Accounts
Free listings
Free listings allow customers to see product results across Google, such as on the Shopping tab, YouTube, Google Search (.com), Google Images, and Google Lens. Unless otherwise indicated, offers are ranked based on our best estimate of a user’s overall shopping experience, considering the relevance of the results to a given query and the experience with the product and/or merchant offering it. Google also uses browsing activity on Web Search, the Shopping tab, and Image Search to help get better results. This activity includes searches and clicks on the Google Search results page.
Past Google activity is also used to make recommendations on items to buy and send reminders based on users' preferences.
For both Shopping ads and free listings, users can manage how their experience is personalised on the Activity Controls of their Google Accounts, where they can turn off personalisation by turning off ad personalisation and Web & App Activity or by deleting past activity.
If they're not signed in to their Google Accounts, they can turn off personalised ads on Search, YouTube and Web by going to Ads Settings and then turning on or off personalised ads within each section.
For more information on recommendations and personalisation, visit the Google Shopping help centre.
Travel
Hotels
When users do a hotel search on Google, they find a list of hotel results and a map that shows those results. By default, the results are sorted by relevance. Dozens of factors are considered in ranking by relevance, including search terms and various hotel aspects, like location, price, user ratings, and reviews. Results may be personalised based on browsing activity, recent searches on Google and previous bookings (for signed-in users with the appropriate account settings).
Users might find one or more paid ads at the top of the results, indicated by an “Ad” badge and the name of the advertiser. These ads are selected and ranked by an auction in which Google considers bids and the quality of the ad. These ads only appear when they’re relevant to a search query and they have no impact on the search results.
To control what they find, users can adjust their search and app activity through the Activity controls of their Google Account where they can turn off personalisation by turning off Web&App Activity or by deleting past activity. They can also adjust Personal results and Gmail settings.
Flights
When users search for flights, Google Flights automatically sorts the results by 'Best Flights', an order that shows the best value by price, length, time of day and other factors. 'Best departing flights' are ranked based on the best trade-off between price and convenience, including factors such as duration, number of stops and airport changes during stopovers. Other departing flights are ranked in ascending order by price, with unpriced itineraries below all others.
Once users select an itinerary, they may see one or more links to book with our airline and OTA partners. Booking links are ranked based on different factors including whether the link has a price, the price offered by the partner on Google Flights and whether the link leads to a mobile-friendly website, if the link is an airline or an online travel agency link, as well as link type and quality.
For more information on how search works for hotels, visit the Hotel tab in the Travel Help Centre. For more information on how we rank the best Google Flights, visit the Flights tab in the Travel Help Centre .
YouTube
YouTube’s recommendation system is constantly evolving, learning every day from over 80 billion pieces of information we call signals, which can include a user’s watch and search history (if enabled), channel subscriptions, and watch time.
YouTube also uses sharing, likes and dislikes, and the “Not interested” and “Don’t recommend” selections. Because everyone has unique viewing habits, the YouTube system compares a user’s viewing habits with those with similar habits, using that information to suggest other content that might be relevant.
The importance of each signal depends on each individual user, and is why our system doesn't follow a set formula. Instead, our system develops dynamically as a user’s viewing habits change.
There are several ways to influence these recommendations and search results. Users can remove or pause specific videos from their watch history or search history through My Google Activity. They can also choose topics in their recommendations on the Home and Watch pages or remove recommended content.
For more information on YouTube Search, visit the YouTube Search page. To learn how YouTube recommendations work, visit YouTube’s recommendation page. To manage your YouTube recommendations and search results, visit the YouTube Help Centre.