This is handy. If you go to google.com/ads/preferences you can find out what Google thinks you’re interested in.

It seems to know mw pretty well, though I’m not sure why it thinks I care about Java. I’m not much interested in physics or academic conferences and papers either, but I have spent a bit of time reading through some recently.

You can remove categories you are not interested in, ad some new ones or opt out of the whole deal from this page.

Since you’ve read this, you may also find your Google account settings and your dashboard interesting or useful. The web history can be fun to trawl through too.

Updated to add: A while ago I turned on instant search in Google Chrome, and you can see what effect that has had on the terms Google has recorded for my web history. 

And no, I don’t type that slowly!