Mark Pack

Google (and advertisers who use Google) can target adverts at you based on what content you’ve looked at online. It’s done via a cookie – a small file placed on your computer – that then lets Google record the sorts of sites you visit.

Google has various privacy and security rules in place (e.g. it records the category of site, such as local news, rather than the specific site) but even so some people find this degree of tracking creepy. Even if you don’t find it creepy – and indeed may welcome anything that makes the ads you see more likely to be of interest – it can be interesting to see what Google thinks you are interested in.

You can find out at http://www.google.com/ads/preferences which also gives more details of how this Google feature works and gives an option to opt out from being tracked.