Forum Moderators: martinibuster
[edited by: martinibuster at 6:18 am (utc) on Jan. 13, 2006]
[edit reason] tidied up post. [/edit]
However, even though you will be viewing via a proxy, I assume google will STILL KNOW if you are clicking your own ads, so just make sure that you don't click 'em!
I understand what you are trying to do, as I need to see what ads are showing in the US where most of my traffic is from.
I think that Google should provide better tools to allow us to see what ads actually show in other countries. The preview tool shows a "Possible selection" as opposed to actual ads. Many of the ads I see in the preview tool are ones in the block list!
Yes, the preview tool does show the blocked urls and this can waste a lot of time. I had compliled a list the other day as I swept through various targeted pages on my site and upon pasting them found that mony of them were in my filter already.
There is no chance that I would be clicking on my own ads, firstly because theiving is just not in my nature and secondly, my site is doing nicely and it would take a complete fool to jeopardise that.
I actually found a site once that simply does a screen grab of you page from it's server in the US and emails them back, however it was quite expensive to join and useless for this purpose as you obviously could not copy the advertisers url to sus them out or paste in your filter's list
I agree that some public proxies still show UK ads, but that's not always the case. You need to scroll down the list and try a few. Also, clear out your cache between trying proxies.
I disagree that you will still see UK ads because Google detects English as your browser language. I use a proxy and see the US ads. I would imagine that Google can still detect you clicking on your own ads though. So it's wrong to assume the OP wants to indulge in click fraud - he's merely trying to do something that the preview tool should be doing but for some reason G don't want it to. I have emailed them on several occasions to ask them to implement a feature whereby we can accurately see what ads are showing - no sensible reply.
ASA - can you offer some input here?