Both Google and Yahoo uses cookies to identify properties such as geographic, operating system, surfing behavior etc to show relevant ads.
What are these cookies?
Google uses cookies in order to provide a better user experience and to serve relevant ads. Cookies are set based on your viewing of web pages in Google’s content network and do not contain any information that can identify you personally. This information helps Google deliver ads that are relevant to your interests, control the number of times you see a given ad, and measure the effectiveness of ad campaigns.
Yahoo! displays more relevant advertising based on your browser’s activities on the Yahoo! owned and operated web sites, such as the types of pages viewed or categories of terms searched on. By using this anonymous information (through cookies), Yahoo! hopes to bring more relevant advertising to you.
You can however choose to opt out from both search engines so your data and habits won’t be used to better customize advertising to you. Opt out from Google here and Yahoo here.
Notes
1. What happens after opting out is that new cookie data is written.
2. Cookies are browser specific and that means you would need to opt out three times if you use 3 different browsers like me (firefox, opera, internet explorer).
3. Your opt out will mean nothing if you set your browser to clear cookies each time it closes.
Leave a Reply