RhinoFish - 1:15 pm on Sep 25, 2007 (gmt 0)

For the ad preview tool, can the destination url be embedded in the links that come up please?

google.com/adpreview
I know this tool is for "AdWords advertisers to test their ads."...

But in practice, many merchants have affiliate programs so there's often some policing they need to do - and there, the ad preview tool comes in VERY HANDY! I can see that may be beyond the tool's present scope, but as an AdWords consultant, my MCC clients are routinely asking me to identify who the heck is bidding on their domain names, trademarks and such. The only way to do that, and to serve my AdWords clients, is to use the real ad results - because I can right-click on the ad link and see the destination url to identify the "who" behind the ad.

One trick hucksters use is to geo-target a merchant's domain name except in the city where they know the merchant is located. So the merchant never sees their affiliates poaching them.

I don't need the preview tool to have active, working links in its results, but if you could stuff the destination url into the non-links it outputs, I could make much better use of the adpreview tool!

If this isn't doable, I'm requesting a tool within my MCC (and individual adwords account) that gives me the ability to "see" the information requested above.

Why is this in G's direct interests (besides serving their largest clients)... if policing is easier to implement, merchants are more likely to allow affiliates to do direct-to-merchant ppc - this ads volume, long tail and competition to the overall G auction system - all benefitting G and the consumer using G. Further, I think this would reduce a substantial number of calls that G is undoubtedly getting from merchants who are trying to chase things like this down.