Question for advertisers

from an adsense publisher

[ownerrim]

I posted this in the adsense forum but didn't get a revealing answer, so I thought I'd try my luck here.

I have an info site that carries adsense. Recently, I've started seeing this url showing up in my daily stats of referrers:

[pagead2.googlesyndication.com...]

I'm guessing this is what advertisers see as a result of adwords ads having been placed on google search or the content network?

The thing is, I don't run adwords. I only carry adsense.

I've written to adsense tech support twice with no response at all. Does anyone have a clue what this is or what this means?

[PatrickDeese]

You might get that referral string if you have an alternate ad triggered.

[Steve6]

Doesn't Google have to read your page on which the Content ads are located to find keywords?

[ownerrim]

patrickdeese,

Someone mentioned that in the adsense forum as well. But I don't run a single alternate ad on any page.

[PatrickDeese]

Perhaps you rank well for a term that gets traffic from a site or sites that uses AdSense For Search - which shows natural and paid listings.

[ownerrim]

A new piece of the puzzle: I just found that at the same this google syndication url started popping up in my traffic stats, traffic to one specific page on my site shot right through the roof.

speculation: someone copied my page and intended to have their adwords ad use the copy as a landing page. but they mistakenly set my original page as the landing page. Sound plausible?