A browsing history setting — here’s where to find it and what it controls
Amazon saves your search history by default and uses it to personalize product recommendations, targeted advertising, and search suggestions. Every search you run on Amazon contributes to a profile that influences what you see across the platform.
You can delete your search history, turn off history saving, and limit how it’s used — though like most Amazon data settings, the controls are spread across several different places.
Here’s exactly where each one lives.
Delete Your Existing Search History
Before turning off future saving, clearing what Amazon has already collected removes the existing data from your recommendations and suggestions.
Go to amazon.com and hover over Account and Lists in the top right. Select Account. Go to Browsing History — this is sometimes listed under Personalization or accessible through the search history section.
Alternatively, go directly to amazon.com/browsing-history — this page shows your full browsing and search activity on Amazon.
At the top of the browsing history page, look for Manage History and click it. You’ll see options to remove individual items or to Remove All Items from View. Clicking this clears your browsing history from Amazon’s recommendations system.
Note: Removing items from view affects what Amazon uses for recommendations — it doesn’t necessarily delete the underlying data from Amazon’s servers permanently. It removes it from the active recommendation pool.
Turn Off Search and Browsing History Saving
Amazon allows you to turn off future history collection for browsing and search activity.
On the browsing history page at amazon.com/browsing-history, click Manage History and look for a toggle that says Turn Browsing History On/Off. Switch it to Off.
With this turned off, Amazon stops adding new searches and product views to your history and stops using this data for personalized recommendations going forward. The setting persists until you change it back.
Manage Alexa Search History (If You Use Alexa)
If you search Amazon through Alexa voice commands, those searches are stored separately from web search history — in your Alexa voice history rather than your browsing history.
Go to the Alexa app on your phone. Tap More → Activity Center → Voice History. Review your voice search history and delete individual items or all history from there.
In the Alexa app, go to More → Settings → Alexa Privacy → Manage Your Alexa Data. Here you can set Alexa to automatically delete voice recordings after a set period — three months, eighteen months, or when you choose — rather than keeping them indefinitely.
Limit Personalized Advertising Based on Your Searches
Amazon uses your search and purchase history for its own advertising platform — both ads shown on Amazon and ads shown on other websites through Amazon’s ad network. Limiting this is a separate setting from browsing history.
Go to Account → Advertising Preferences or navigate to amazon.com/adprefs. Here you can opt out of interest-based advertising from Amazon. Turning this off means Amazon stops using your browsing and search data to target you with personalized ads — both on Amazon and on third-party sites that use Amazon’s advertising.
This doesn’t stop you from seeing ads on Amazon — it just makes them less targeted, based on general context rather than your specific search history.
Manage Amazon’s Data and Privacy Settings
Amazon consolidates some data controls in a central privacy settings area.
Go to Account → Data and Privacy or search for it in your account settings. This page provides an overview of your Amazon data including request options for data downloads, data deletion requests, and links to various privacy controls across Amazon’s services.
For search history specifically, the browsing history page remains the most direct control. The Data and Privacy page is useful for understanding the full scope of what Amazon collects and for making formal data requests if you want a comprehensive deletion rather than just a history clear.
Use Amazon Without an Account for Anonymous Searching
The most complete way to prevent Amazon from saving your searches is to browse without being logged in. Amazon still collects some session-level data for anonymous visitors, but without an account there’s no persistent profile to attach searches to — they don’t follow you across sessions.
For specific searches you don’t want associated with your account — gift searches, personal health product browsing, or anything you’d rather keep private — logging out before searching and logging back in afterward prevents those searches from attaching to your account history.
This is admittedly inconvenient for regular use but is the most effective privacy-preserving approach for specific sensitive searches.
Use a Private Browsing Window
Searching Amazon in an incognito or private browsing window while not logged in prevents searches from being stored in your Amazon account history. It also prevents your browser from storing the searches locally.
Even in private mode, if you’re logged into your Amazon account, your searches still attach to your account history — the private browsing prevents local browser storage but doesn’t affect Amazon’s server-side logging. Log out of Amazon before using private mode if you want both effects.
Children’s Profiles and Household Sharing
If you share an Amazon household with family members, each person’s searches contribute to a shared recommendation environment. If you’re seeing unwanted search-based suggestions that don’t reflect your own searches, a family member’s searches may be influencing your recommendations.
Amazon Household members can have separate profiles. Go to Account → Amazon Household and review the sharing settings. Separate profiles maintain more independent recommendation histories, though some personalization data is still shared at the household level.
A Quick Reference
| What You Want to Do | Where to Go |
|---|---|
| Delete existing search and browsing history | amazon.com/browsing-history → Manage History → Remove All |
| Turn off future history saving | amazon.com/browsing-history → Manage History → Turn Browsing History Off |
| Limit advertising personalization | amazon.com/adprefs or Account → Advertising Preferences |
| Delete Alexa voice search history | Alexa app → More → Activity Center → Voice History |
| Auto-delete Alexa history | Alexa app → Settings → Alexa Privacy → Manage Your Alexa Data |
| Full data overview and deletion requests | Account → Data and Privacy |
The Bottom Line
Amazon saving your searches is a default behavior tied to your account — turning it off requires going to the browsing history page and switching the history toggle off. Deleting existing history clears what’s already been collected from your active recommendation profile.
The advertising preferences setting handles the ad targeting dimension separately — turning off interest-based advertising means your searches don’t follow you to other websites through Amazon’s ad network.
For the most private Amazon browsing possible, combining the history toggle off with logging out for sensitive searches covers both the account-level and session-level data collection.
Amazon remembers your searches because it finds them useful for selling to you — turning off history saves you from that loop, one settings toggle at a time.
Meet Ry, “TechGuru,” a 36-year-old technology enthusiast with a deep passion for tech innovations. With extensive experience, he specializes in gaming hardware and software, and has expertise in gadgets, custom PCs, and audio.
Besides writing about tech and reviewing new products, he enjoys traveling, hiking, and photography. Committed to keeping up with the latest industry trends, he aims to guide readers in making informed tech decisions.