Methods and apparatus for natural language understanding (NLU) processing based on user-specified interests. Information specifying a weight for each of a plurality of domains is received via a user interface. The plurality of domains each relates to a potential area of interest for the user, and the weight for a domain from among the plurality of domains indicates a level of interest for the user in the domain. A ranking classifier used to rank NLU hypotheses generated by an NLU engine is trained using training data from which features are, at least in part, based on the information specifying a weight for each of the plurality of domains.