7 ms·

wow I went to the url provided, http://www.google.com/ads/preferences/ http://www.google.com/ads/preferences/ . To see what interests are associated with my co

wow I went to the url provided, http://www.google.com/ads/preferences/ http://www.google.com/ads/preferences/ . To see what interests are associated with my cookie. Its amazingly accurate as to what my interests are. In all honesty its quite impressive.

meta 16y ago
Accurate in no false positives or accurate in it captured it's best fit to you? I was in the same boat as you but then I investigated what all it could flag on my account and realized that I tricked myself. My categories were actually closer to fortune-telling type stuff. 'You like video games', 'You like online videos', 'You like computers & electronics'. But when I drilled down I found it missed lots of things it could flag me for. Google did not recognize I was a programmer despite me googling for various C apis and programming questions commonly. Last summer I spent a good amount of time learning to garden with much help from google but nothing about that category. I often google books for reviews rather than goto amazon.com directly. Given the amount of interests I have told google about I am actually surprised that they have flagged me for such a conservative set of categories. That said: it is nice to peek under the covers in such a convenient way. Edit: And now I am, oddly, pausing before opting out. If you had asked me if I would have opted out before I had the choice I would have said yes. But now, given the choice to opt out, I wonder if I am actually giving up value. If I opt out do I lose something of value to me: having a better chance of that spacing being filled with something valuable rather than just noise. Is it a fair trade: My interests for a better signal-to-noise ratio? Before I had the choice it felt, to my human brain, that I was getting the short end of the deal. But now that I have a choice my human brain is wondering if it is a fair deal after-all. funny.
- minalecs 16y ago
  I agree with you in terms of how conservative these categories are, but my assumption was that these are the categories that are most likely to get you to click on consumer products that you'd be willing to act on most immediately. Example: the type of music I'm most interested was categorized correctly, and I tend to look for new music to purchase.
- JacobAldridge 16y ago
  "Accurate in no false positives or accurate in it captured it's best fit to you?" One false positive for me - Beauty - though that's probably my beautiful wife searching. Regarding capturing me - not close. A few periphery interests (comics - because I have Dilbert delivered to my Gmail each day?), but not one business category despite the fact that I work as a business coach, write a business blog, used to edit and run social media for a national business coaching company, and spend a heap of time on HN and elsewhere reading business articles. I also welcomed the awareness because it made me go 'meh'.
citricsquid 16y ago
I agree, it has some things about me that are great for advertisers ("Shopping - Apparel - Casual Apparel - T-Shirts" -- I spend way too much on t-shirts) but it's also got some stuff I was once interested in for an hour but then never went back to, like "Audio Files & Formats" and then that are just plain wrong... "People & Society - Family & Relationships - Family - Parenting" (single male)
jacquesm 16y ago
FWIW here is my list: Business & Industrial - Business Finance - Venture Capital Business & Industrial - Manufacturing Business & Industrial - Retail Trade - Retail Equipment & Technology Computers & Electronics - Computer Security Computers & Electronics - Programming Computers & Electronics - Software Proxying & Filtering Internet & Telecom - Email & Messaging News Online Communities - Social Networks Online Communities - Virtual Worlds Real Estate It's pretty accurate but there are quite a few omissions and at least one weird false positive (real estate).
- periferral 16y ago
  you must have clicked on the rent vs buy article
abhigupta 16y ago
You can opt-out of all of the preference tracking ad networks from this site http://www.networkadvertising.org/managing/opt_out.asp http://www.networkadvertising.org/managing/opt_out.asp
jamesbritt 16y ago
I clicked the link to see what would come up for me, but got a page error. Then I realized that doubleclick domains have been zeroed out in my hosts file for some time, as well as numerous other tracker domains.

meta 16y ago

Accurate in no false positives or accurate in it captured it's best fit to you? I was in the same boat as you but then I investigated what all it could flag on my account and realized that I tricked myself. My categories were actually closer to fortune-telling type stuff. 'You like video games', 'You like online videos', 'You like computers & electronics'. But when I drilled down I found it missed lots of things it could flag me for. Google did not recognize I was a programmer despite me googling for various C apis and programming questions commonly. Last summer I spent a good amount of time learning to garden with much help from google but nothing about that category. I often google books for reviews rather than goto amazon.com directly. Given the amount of interests I have told google about I am actually surprised that they have flagged me for such a conservative set of categories. That said: it is nice to peek under the covers in such a convenient way. Edit: And now I am, oddly, pausing before opting out. If you had asked me if I would have opted out before I had the choice I would have said yes. But now, given the choice to opt out, I wonder if I am actually giving up value. If I opt out do I lose something of value to me: having a better chance of that spacing being filled with something valuable rather than just noise. Is it a fair trade: My interests for a better signal-to-noise ratio? Before I had the choice it felt, to my human brain, that I was getting the short end of the deal. But now that I have a choice my human brain is wondering if it is a fair deal after-all. funny.

minalecs 16y ago
I agree with you in terms of how conservative these categories are, but my assumption was that these are the categories that are most likely to get you to click on consumer products that you'd be willing to act on most immediately. Example: the type of music I'm most interested was categorized correctly, and I tend to look for new music to purchase.
JacobAldridge 16y ago
"Accurate in no false positives or accurate in it captured it's best fit to you?" One false positive for me - Beauty - though that's probably my beautiful wife searching. Regarding capturing me - not close. A few periphery interests (comics - because I have Dilbert delivered to my Gmail each day?), but not one business category despite the fact that I work as a business coach, write a business blog, used to edit and run social media for a national business coaching company, and spend a heap of time on HN and elsewhere reading business articles. I also welcomed the awareness because it made me go 'meh'.

citricsquid 16y ago

I agree, it has some things about me that are great for advertisers ("Shopping - Apparel - Casual Apparel - T-Shirts" -- I spend way too much on t-shirts) but it's also got some stuff I was once interested in for an hour but then never went back to, like "Audio Files & Formats" and then that are just plain wrong... "People & Society - Family & Relationships - Family - Parenting" (single male)

jacquesm 16y ago

FWIW here is my list: Business & Industrial - Business Finance - Venture Capital Business & Industrial - Manufacturing Business & Industrial - Retail Trade - Retail Equipment & Technology Computers & Electronics - Computer Security Computers & Electronics - Programming Computers & Electronics - Software Proxying & Filtering Internet & Telecom - Email & Messaging News Online Communities - Social Networks Online Communities - Virtual Worlds Real Estate It's pretty accurate but there are quite a few omissions and at least one weird false positive (real estate).

periferral 16y ago
you must have clicked on the rent vs buy article

abhigupta 16y ago

You can opt-out of all of the preference tracking ad networks from this site http://www.networkadvertising.org/managing/opt_out.asp http://www.networkadvertising.org/managing/opt_out.asp

jamesbritt 16y ago

I clicked the link to see what would come up for me, but got a page error. Then I realized that doubleclick domains have been zeroed out in my hosts file for some time, as well as numerous other tracker domains.