Google AdSense Forum

Since this is a piece of information I can know about when a user clicks an ad, I want to be able to get this information so I analyze it to help me optimize my ads.

We only have so many channels we can associate to the ads, and it has been SUGGESTED that mearly using channels can alter an ad's performance (Smart Pricing maybe?). This information doesn't rely on channels and won't require an ad to be changed from its original state leading to better and more accurate observations. It allows us to monitor our ads with the limitations of using channels.

I'm also curious to know as much as I can about what Google knows about my site. Obviously I can't see from here all the information they gather, but I was surprised to find out that they know the page to user was on previous to being on the current page.

u_tz = User's Time Zone. Number of seconds shifted. Can be either negative of positive. Don't know if this is UTC or California based.

Yep...the specific vars about the ad will not be had by the site owner.

For example...these you can get:

u_h =? Number that seems to change. (users browser window height)
u_w =? Number that seems to change. (users browser window width)

But these you cannot get:

dt =? Its a number that changes. Maybe the time? (yes)
lmt =? Also a number that changes. (last modified time)
u_ah =? Number that seems to change. (ad height)
u_aw =? Number that seems to change. (ad width)

and so on.

Thanks JAG on the dt confirmation and for the u_h adn u_w values.

This is not a complete list of variables, but are the ones I have seen myself in my research. If you have more, please add them, but be careful not to share exact values of the variables.

If you have comments or feedback of my interpretation of the variables, please add them.

client - Unique ID representing the account that is showing this ad. This is the account that will get credit for the ad click.

dt - This is the time the ad was served in Unix Timestamp format with three numbers concatenated at the end. The time zone is UTC. I have no clue as to what the last three numbers at the end stand for. I thought microseconds, with three digits of microseconds, that seems way too extreme for Google to want to keep track of.

lmt - This also seems to be the time the ad was served, but without the last three digits that dt has at the end. Otherwise dt and lmt are equivalent.

alternate_ad_url - The publisher's specified url for the alternate ad if there are no ads for the visitor to be shown.

alt_color - The publisher's specified color to be shown if there is no ads for the visitor to be shown.

format - The publisher's specified format for the ad.

prev_fmts - Other ad formats coded in the HTML document that are higher to the top of the HTML code than the current format.

output - The output type for the ad. For me this always seems to contain the same value for my HTML ads, but this might be different for other ad formats like RSS.

channel - The publisher assigned tracking channels for the current ad.

pv_ch - Other tracking channels assigned to ads that are coded in the HTML document higher to the top of the HTML code than the current ad.

url - The location of the current page that is showing the document.

color_bg - The publisher's specified background color for the ad.

color_text - The publisher's specified text color for the ad.

color_link - The publisher's specified link color for the ad.

color_url - The publisher's specified url color for the ad.

color_border - The publisher's specified border color for the ad.

ad_type - The publisher's specified type of ad to run, such as text ads, image ads, or both. This is not specified for link ads.

loc - Rarely shows, but so far seems to be equal the the url value.

cc - No clue! This value seems to be a constant integer, but after reviewing my logs I did see this value change to a different integer. No idea way.

u_h - Visitor's screen height.

u_w - Visitor's screen width.

u_ah - Visitor's available window height (when you take the screen height and factor the size of the browser window, and space taken by browser toolbars).

u_aw - Visitor's available window width.

u_cd - Visitor's color depth of their screen.

u_tz - Visitor's timezone shift in seconds from UTC.

u_his - Not sure. This might correspond to how many times this visitor has seen ads on this page, without accounting for the number of ads on the page. However, that's just a guess.

u_java - Not sure. My guess is if the user has javascript available or not, which seems strange as they would have to have javascript available to get this far.

ref - The referring URL the visitor was on immediately prior to viewing the publisher's page with the ads.

qsrc - Not sure. Seems to be an integer that shows if the ref value is from specific domains.

o - Not sure. Seems to be an integer that shows along with qsrc.

l - Not sure. Seems to be a text string that shows along with qsrc and o.

ptnrS - Not sure. Seems to be a text string that shows if the ref value is from specific domains. (Does not seem to be related to domains corresponding to qsrc, o and l values).

searchfor - Words searched by visitors. Shows with ptnrS. These terms are not visible in ref value.

u_nplug - No clue. Rarely shows. Seems to be an integer.

This is directly related to screen size so change your screen size slightly and you'll see it change :-)

[webmasterworld.com...]

I was able to confirm that dt is a Unix timestamp expressed in milliseconds.

I am still having no clue what cc is. I'm was thought it concerned a relationship to the browser size and screen size, or dealing with the position of the scroll bar, however I'm now pretty sure its neither of these.

I am very surprised at the information Google collects and uses. I've always looked up to them for their data-mining, but I am impressed. I'm just hoping some of the variables I see might be passed on more to me.

I know that some of this information there are scripts and databases I could buy and install that will tell me some of this information, but I'll always have to deal with upgrading hassles. I can grab this information and use it to help build a better profile of my visitors. I also am more trusting of this information knowing this is the data-mining opinions from Google.

Things I'm seeing include age, gender, job...

It would seem that cc is the ratio of scrollHeight to clientHeight for the body object, expressed as a percentage. I'm not entirely sure how that's useful. It may be a sly way of checking for frames. It would seem to be less than 100 in some frame situations.

example

Now it appears as:
pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/iclk?sa=l&ai=...
where ... = approximately 350 alphanumeric characters
Looks like they are encrypting that info now

This is true since it is very easy to detect the majority of fraud out there by doing the simple things. To my amazement, Google does not do some of the other basic checks for fraud. Makes me wonder how much they really want to stop it.

Sorry, to clarify, I meant you could definitely add hint to the list on this page, as it is a parameter that might be passed in the url.