I stopped using persistent browser history because I realized without it I become more diligent at bookmarking pages. Deliberately bookmarked pages are alot less clutter than my entire browsing history, so with my address bar only searching my bookmarks and current session's history, it's easier for me to find what I'm looking for. It results in smaller haystacks for my needles to get lost in. I loath using general purpose search engines to pull up pages when I already know what page I'm trying to get to, so I bookmark any page I think I'll care about in the future.