What does Google think you are?

The divine Valerie several months ago introduced me to the concept of What does your TiVo think you are? – that after some measurement of your behaviour it can extrapolate to find other programmes that you might like, and record them on your behalf.

I heard reports of peoples’ TiVos coming to the most bizzare conclusions about their habits, “spontaneously” recording foreign language pr0n, stuff like that; I can’t help but wonder how much of this is due to bad extrapolation, and how much to people not wanting to fess-up to their TV habits, but it seemed an amusing concept nonetheless.

I don’t have a PVR but I do have a Blog, and Technorati is one place that leverages my free content for which I (currently) receive no monies, for their own profit.

Assuming that Google Ads reflect the page that I am visiting, rather than my past history of browsing, it seems that Google most definitely thinks I am a security person…

/users/alecm/albums/dropdata/i-guess-i-do-security.gif

…but there’s quite a wide gulf between 128-bit SSL, and 775 Kilovolt Stun Guns.

Maybe Google’s classification system, like TiVo’s, could be refined a bit?

Update:

I wonder if I do not presume too much, given thaat the page in question is that of my “Technorati Universe” and not a security blog per-se?

That said if most people visiting the page (click “Technorati Search” in the sidebar near the top) get security stuff too, that’d be evidence that it is measuring my page, rather than my behaviour.

What do you find?

Comments

8 responses to “What does Google think you are?”

  1. Chris Samuel
    re: What does Google think you are?

    For your site I see the same adverts, but in a different order.

    Just did the same on mine and the sponsored ads at Technorati gave me 4 Linux based ads and one Windows one.

    Interestingly one of the Linux ones is a Microsoft one (the old “Windows outperforms Linux” chestnut) – click on it and you end up at the “Facts” page (for suitably low values of fact) page for Windows Server Systems at Microsoft.

  2. Chris Samuel
    It’s “ContextAd” – not Google..

    http clk.contextad.net/Corporate/home/

    The ads look *very* similar to the Google ones, but mouse over and you’ll see the URL isn’t a Google one..

  3. alecm
    re: It’s …

    Ooooh… there’s a twist. The next question is whether they are in bed with Technorati to classify the pages, or whether they are reflectng knowledge of my home website…

    Hmmm – I wonder how I can test that?

  4. Chris Samuel
    re: It’s …

    Not sure, but here are some leads:

    http://www.econtentmag.com/Articles/ArticleReader.aspx?ArticleID=7104&CategoryID=9

    http://www.contextweb.com (parent company)

    battellemedia.com/archives/000903.php (blog about their launch with PR)

    I guess what they’re doing is basing their ads on the Technorati results, i.e. the context of the links to your site. I may be the culprit for some of the oddities because just above the RSS feed from Dropsafe is the ‘World News’ RSS feed from the BBC, and I seem to be the one with the most results from the Technorati search.

    Interestingly, I just searched for http://www.microsoft.com and got 4 of ads about incorporating a company (including “Wyoming Corporations Better Than Nevada”!) and one about Professional Tax Software..

    Go figure..

  5. Chris Samuel
    re: It’s … ContextAd Bot 1.0

    Well well well, guess who turned up in my server logs today..

    168.75.65.68 – – [15/Jan/2005:23:54:43 -0500] “GET / HTTP/1.1” 200 56908 “-” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0;.NET CLR 1.0.3705; ContextAd Bot 1.0)” 168.75.65.68 – – [15/Jan/2005:23:55:57 -0500] “GET / HTTP/1.1” 200 56908 “-” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0;.NET CLR 1.0.3705; ContextAd Bot 1.0)”

  6. Chris Samuel
    re: It’s … ContextAd Bot 1.0

    Interestingly I’ve got no record at all of them prior to these 4 visits, just when we started discussing them. I’m sure it’s just coincidence.. 🙂

    168.75.65.68 – – [15/Jan/2005:21:24:58 -0500] “GET / HTTP/1.1” 200 56933 “-” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0;.NET CLR 1.0.3705; ContextAd Bot 1.0)”

    168.75.65.68 – – [15/Jan/2005:21:32:10 -0500] “GET / HTTP/1.1” 200 57041 “-” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0;.NET CLR 1.0.3705; ContextAd Bot 1.0)”

    168.75.65.68 – – [15/Jan/2005:23:54:43 -0500] “GET / HTTP/1.1” 200 56908 “-” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0;.NET CLR 1.0.3705; ContextAd Bot 1.0)”

    168.75.65.68 – – [15/Jan/2005:23:55:57 -0500] “GET / HTTP/1.1” 200 56908 “-” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0;.NET CLR 1.0.3705; ContextAd Bot 1.0)”

    They seem to share a netblock with Puma and Britney Spears..

    toolbar.netcraft.com/netblock?q=NAVI-A84B0000-16-0,168.75.0.0,168.75.255.255

  7. bartb
    alec muffett is probably the most celebrated tool for cracking encrypted unix passwords

    If you really want to know what Google things you are:

    http://www.googlism.com

  8. alecm
    re: alec muffett is probably the most celebrated tool for cracking encrypted unix passwords

    a celebrated tool. no big surprise there, then. 😎

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