Forum Moderators: martinibuster
If a domain is filtered, any URL from that domain should be filtered as well.
I have emailed Google about this, but I suspect it could be Monday before I get a response. I provided the entire tracking URL obtained through right clicking and selecting Properties.
Has anyone else noticed anything similar?
About a month ago, we added www.widgets.com to our list of filtered sites. Just now, when hovering over an ad, I see "go to widgets.com/xxx"
I suspect that it's because Adwords advertisers can specify a different hostname to appear in the AdWords/Adsense ad body than the hostname that appears as part of the actual destination URL and I think blocking matches the actual destination URL (someone please verify).
To check the destination URL right-click the hyperlink portion of the ad, copy it, paste it into a text editor and inspect the q variable (string after q=). If the hostname for the URL in the q variable doesn't match the hostname in the ad body that's probably why.
Let us know what you discover.
This should mean that www.widgets.com should not be showing up on Blue_Fin's site, whether it is the displayed URL or the destination URL. Otherwise, Google should say something to the effect of needing to use the destination URL instead.
The FAQ then tells you how to find the domain for your filter list, by either mouseover or right click. But the mouseover would show the displayed URL, not the destination URL, if they happened to be different different domains.
I have seen plenty of ads using completely different destination domains (ie. domainA.com) when their ad just says domain.com, so others could be running into this problem, and perhaps not realize it if they do not surf their sites regularly.
Was the URL on the right click also going to www.widgets.com? Or was the actual URL going to www.widgetsaffiliate.com or something similar?
Going to www.widgets.com. Here's a cut and paste from Properties. I have replaced both the real domain and what comes after the / with widgets and replaced my Publisher ID with xxxxxxxxxx
[pagead2.googlesyndication.com...]
The issue is that Google's filter is only recognizing the exact URL you have filtered. They are not recognizing additional pages on the same domain. This is not an issue of what is displayed vs. the destination URL because they are both the same in this case. The entire domain should be blocked and Google isn't doing that.
This would be akin to filtering www.cnn.com and having an ad display for www.cnn.com/weather. If I filter www.cnn.com, I don't want any ads displayed from anywhere on CNN.
On the same note, it might omit anything that is from the domain whether it is www.widgets.com or www.widgets.com/folder/tracking.html but it just doesn't realize that www.widgets.com and widgets.com are infact the same domain name, not two different ones.
Notice the URL in the AdSense tracking URL is [widgets.com...] and not [widgets.com?...] (Unless that was an ommission on your part
No, there is no www. in either the tracking URL or what is displayed when hovering over the ad.
No, there is no www. in either the tracking URL or what is displayed when hovering over the ad.
In your first post you said:
...we added www.widgets.com to our list of filtered sites.
Try adding widgets.com to the filter instead. I have always blocked using the full hostname and have never had a problem. The problem you're having may be that www.widgets.com does not match widgets.com.
Try adding widgets.com to the filter instead. I have always blocked using the full hostname and have never had a problem. The problem you're having may be that www.widgets.com does not match widgets.com.
You hit the nail on the head there, richmondsteve.
I just received a response from Google and that was what they told me to do.
