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July 29, 2008 4:44 PM PDT

Browser history analyzer guesses your gender

by Josh Lowensohn

YouTube nets a perfect 1:1 gender ratio of users, however your browser history might be another story.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Mike Nolet of blog Mike on Ads has put together a fun little diversion that gives your browser history a quick once over and cross-references it with sites on the Quancast top 1000. Using the gender ratio on each site (according to Quancast) it will cobble together an overall percentage of what gender it thinks you are based on those results.

Not surprisingly most of us in the office, including my colleague Erica Ogg, have come up as male, with many tech sites having higher ratios of male users. The tool will give you a complete rundown of all the sites that popped up, along with their respective ratios. It's pretty fun to go through them and see the estimated makeup of each place--you might be surprised.

In case you're worried about your browsing history being used for evil, Nolet insists he's not doing anything with the data. Many users have left their true genders and the tool's guess in the comments below Nolet's post. The general consensus is that if you visit many popular tech sites you'll be pinned under the male persuasion. Visiting some sites with higher female-to-male ratios like TMZ and Livejournal will swing your overall percentage the other direction.

Note: The tool runs a little slow in Internet Explorer, so if you're having problems switch over to Firefox or Opera.

Josh Lowensohn is an associate editor for Webware.com, CNET's blog about cool and otherwise useful Web applications and services. If you've found a site you'd like profiled, shoot him an e-mail. E-mail Josh.
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