Forum Moderators: martinibuster
First, RIGHT-click the URL and a popup menu will appear. If you're on a Mac then Control-click the URL. (Or buy a two-button mouse, like I did, and make sure the right button is mapped to the Control key. It usually is by default.)
When the popup menu appears choose "Copy Shortcut" (IE) or "Copy Link to Clipboard" (Safari).
You could now paste the URL into the address bar in your browser but it will be difficult to edit there because it's so long. I prefer to paste into a text editor instead. Choose your weapon, and paste the url somewhere.
The url you want to extract STARTS after ?adurl= or &adurl=, and ENDS before &sa or &client. For example:
URL close to the front:
---------------------------
http: //pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/iclk?adurl=http://www.domain.com&sa=l&ai=BIUOsESPHQfW
bLse8iwHx9vWQBZHu2QfH-aSTAcCNtwHAwCkQAxgHIKaelAIoBEi0OaAB5M_-_gOqAQozNjQ4NzM4MjA4sgESbWljaGFlbGJsdWVqY
XkuY29tugEKMTIweDYwMF9hc8gBAdoBLmh0dHA6Ly9taWNoYWVsYmx1ZWpheS5jb20vbWFpbi93aG9sZWZvb2RzLm
h0bWzgAQI&num=7&client=ca-pub-79
48311637472652
URL close to the end:
--------------------------
http: //pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/iclk?sa=l&ai=BnJkGESPHQZfIF6rwigGdocTBBfXnEtniupkBw
I23AdCsIBABGAEgpp6UAigESIU5qgEKNjU1NjQ5MDQ5NrIBEm1pY2hhZWxibHVlamF5LmNvbboBCjEyMHg2MDB
fYXPIAQHaAS5odHRwOi8vbWljaGFlbGJsdWVqYXkuY29tL21haW4vd2hvbGVmb29kcy5o
dG1s&num=1&adurl=http://domain.com/subpage.htm&client=ca-pub-7948311637472652
.
Sometimes the advertiser has chosen to use a long url with their own tracking codes. In cases like that it you might get confused as to which of the gibberish characters belong to the advertiser and which are part of Google's code. The trick is to always look for the delimiters mentioned above. For example:
http: //pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/iclk?sa=l&ai=Bqc_bESPHQa6FIKHMiAHxocDYB66diwio_-iZAcCNtwGQxywQAhgKIKaelAIoBEiMOaoBCjcyODc2
NzU1NTGyARJtaWNoYWVsYmx1ZWpheS5jb226AQk
3Mjh4OTBfYXPIAQHaAS5odHRwOi8vbWljaGFlbGJsd
WVqYXkuY29tL21haW4vd2hvbGVmb29kcy5odG1s4
AED&num=10&adurl=http://www.domain.com/cgi-bin/affiliates/clickthru.cgi%3Fid%3DCapeSpear&client=ca-pub-7948311637472652
Once you've extracted such a url then you're not done yet if you want to visit it. The %3F and %3D are hex codes that Google has substituted for the real characters, ? and = respectively. You'll have to replace those manually, so you'd wind up with:
http://www.domain.com/cgi-bin/affiliates/clickthru.cgi?id=CapeSpear
If you just wanted to ban that page in your URL filter which would you use, the hex version or the?/= version? Hell if I know. Might as well ban them both. Or try to use the shortcut below.
What if the url in question has so much tracking code on it that it exceeds the 64 characters that Google lets you put in the URL filter? Then in that case, I'm 85.3% certain that Google will filter out anything that *starts with* the address you try to ban. For example, if you wanted to ban:
http://www.domain.com/subpage.html?long-ass-tracking-code-blah-blah-blah-loopy-loopy-loo-
omigod-is-this-ever-gonna stop-kenneth-what-is-the-frequency
Then you could just ban this:
www.domain.com/subpage.html
Or you could just ban www.domain.com to ban everything from that domain.
Why Google hasn't bothered to make this clear on their website even though they have paid staff, and so I have to do it as a volunteer effort for free, is beyond me. I didn't even get one of them nifty radios. And my first click yesterday brought me $0.00 cents. But I'm not bitter or nuthin'.
Love, -MBJ-
bit safer than putting your mouse anywhere near a ad just in case you clicked by mistake ;)
merry christmas
PS those radio's are very nifty indeed
Clicking "Ads by Google" does NOT give you the full URLs.
The Preview Tool does NOT necessarily show you the specific ads you're trying to investigate. IF it shows you the ad you want to investigate then great, but if not then you should use the instructions I posted above.
