Google Desktop Search Tool: How to Delete Your Index and History

Contributor Icon Contributed by MickeyMouse Date Icon October 14, 2004  
Tag Icon Tagged: Google  

Google desktop search tool is great… sometimes too good! If the tool indexes something you do not want, here’s how to get rid of it.


Now you can use google to search all the files on your computer. Freaking awesome! You can download it here:

http://desktop.google.com/

Suddenly, you can find all files on your computer with a quick search. Oppps! Suddenly, anybody who is using your computer can do a quick search and find a ton of juicy stuff. Scary, huh?

There are ways to hide certain directories from google that are easy enough; however, manually deleting things from a google search is not easy.

Here’s the best way to handle this.

Here’s how to delete the index. Delete all the files in this folder:
C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Google Desktop Search
(where username is your actual username)

Now this will delete your entire google desktop search index. After you do it, you will find nothing in your google search. Uninstall and reinstall the desktop tool.

Next, set your directories that you don’t want google to search…

That way, you can set your “pron” directory to “do not search” and all your pron or whatever will not be indexed.

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  • P. Grimps

    Does deleting files from google desktop also delete them from other files (ie word, etc.)?

  • Mohit

    Hey can you tell the procedure to do the same in linux..

  • Babrakadabra

    Thanks!!! :)

  • osama

    i cant seem to find tht file u said to go to on my computer, can u guide me please

  • Kath

    I can't find the local settings folder… Is it hidden? Can you tell me how to find it?
    Thanks

  • mac

    What about for a Mac?

  • Ed Callahan

    Yes, What about for a Mac? I tried to get into the folder and it says “could not be opened because you do not have sufficient privileges.” I am logged in as Administrator and the files (index) does belong to me. What now?

  • nast

    I have followed the above, and deleted all fh1, ch1 etc files, plus deleted a number of indexes as well. Are these indexes now permanently deleted? i.e. if someone goes on the PB, uninstalls google desktop and then downloads it again, will these indexes still be deleted?

    Or is the only permanent way of deleting all history to reformat the hard disk?

  • ghanaapaathi

    it's not that simple.i get this prompt,`this file cannot be deleted because it is being used by another person or programme`.

  • http://www.specialoffers.com/ Name

    Thank you worked great.

    For the paranoid crowd, Eraser can truly erase them. And it's free.

  • Azhar

    Hi. I'm running out of disk space on my C. But I have plenty on my other partition and secondary hard drive. How I can set Google Desktop to store the index on any directory that I want?

    Thanks

  • Azhar

    Hi. I'm running out of disk space on my C. But I have plenty on my other partition and secondary hard drive. How I can set Google Desktop to store the index on any directory that I want?

    Thanks

  • Mobile App Development

    Hey can you tell the procedure to do the same in linux..

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