I ran a 5-day experiment to see how fast Google reshapes your ad profile

I ran a 5-day experiment to see how fast Google reshapes your ad profile(nanobuilds.substack.com)

13 points by nanobuilds 57 days ago | 6 comments

nanobuilds 57 days ago |

Three fresh Google accounts on different US residential proxies. Two browsed with specific personas (fisherman, fitness). The third did nothing for five days.

Google was more aggressive than I expected. 17 new ad interests from a single session. By Day 1 it was already removing interests and replacing them. Not adding to your profile. Rewriting it. The control didn't move once in five days.

I built a Mac app (MirrorMask) that does this against your real profiles. Happy to answer questions about the experiment or methodology.

malwrar 57 days ago | |

I’d be curious to know where you source your data from! Your project (neat idea btw) has me thinking about tracking this data for my own personal profile over time in some sort of dashboard, to see how Google’s opinion of me changes with my behavior online

nanobuilds 57 days ago | | |

The data comes straight from Google's Ad Center (myadcenter.google.com). Google shows you the interest categories and brands they've assigned to your profile. I automated scraping that page daily for each account during the experiment.

MirrorMask actually does exactly what you're describing. It scrapes your Ad Center profile before and after each session and shows you the diff. You can watch interests appear and disappear over time. The dashboard tracks your profile changes across sessions.

lapalapa 57 days ago |

Nice ro read. At home, we use 3 tablets and one television on one Google account. All of us have own Google accounts on own phones. I have different Google account on different machines (linux, mac, win10). The first Google account have some random ads on TV and tablets. Practically without real content for each of us. On phones are more targeted (wife, kids) but still randomised.

The strange thigs come on accounts that are on my working machines. All are on same IP range like other devices, the difference is the OS. All ads are different. Sometimes womans stuff, aliexpress, amazon. Without any logic.

Im coming from a small European country but all ads on working machines are american or chinese (english language). On other devices are in my language.

Any idea?

nanobuilds 57 days ago | |

The work machine differences are interesting. Google uses OS, browser language, and the language of content you consume as profiling signals, not just searches. If your work browsing is mostly English-language sites, Google may be slotting those accounts into a different market entirely. Same IP, but different OS telemetry, different default browser settings, different behavioral fingerprint.

Would be interesting to check myadcenter.google.com on each machine to see how different the profiles actually are.