You are what you browse?

Published 6:04 pm Friday, August 1, 2008

What can a Web site tell about you from analyzing your Internet browsing history?

It might just be able to tell you whether you’re male or female.

That’s what this Web page does, using demographic information to major Web sites. It’s meant more as a lark than anything really serious.

I clicked on it to analyze the browsing history on my computer here at work, and it concluded that there was a 99 percent likelihood that I was male. Apparently, my browsing history is pretty manly. Actually, it’s due to the fact that most of the Web sites I visit at work are business and stock market-related, where the majority of online visitors are male. That also holds true for most of the political news sites I check in with frequently.

So, in my case, this fun little Web test turned out correct. But don’t worry if it guesses your gender wrongly. From the comments associated with the Web page, that’s not a rare occurrence. My boss (male, for the record) visits Mapquest and other sites often that are visited by more women than men on average, so this page wildly incorrectly guessed his gender. For another co-worker, a female, it correctly guessed with 70 percent certainty that she’s a woman.