right click->copy shortcut->delete everything but the target url

-> Go to site {Publisher's can check advertisers}

[loanuniverse]

While some of us are pretty laissez faire when it comes to ads that show in our site. It is understandable that some other webmasters might want to check the advertisers that are shown in your site.

Prompted by someone complaining that this is not possible under the current system, I decided to check a few of the ads on my site today using the following system, which works with my Internet Explorer V 6.0 Please be careful when doing this as you do not want to left-click on the ad by mistake and generate an inadvertant click

Place mouse over the ad you want to check
->right click
-> copy shortcut
-> paste shortcut in text editor or even better the address bar of explorer.
-> delete everything but the target url
-> go to site

The system works great and will not result in fraudulent clicks.

Note: The target URL is the bolded portion of the following:

...........adurl= http://XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX &client= ........

Everything between addurl= & &client=

Edit: For the more technically advanced = Try this trick... assuming that you have a firewall installed on your PC, open a good sample of pages from your site in different windows. Go to the firewall and disable access to the internet from internet explorer or better yet disconect from the net. Follow the steps above while collecting the URLs and placing them in notepad. Connect to the internet again and check them one by one. This should stop you from left clicking by mistake [/b]

[Mario]

If you mouseover the advert it shows you the url in the status bar. I prefer to mentally note it and then type it into the address bar.

[amznVibe]

It should be fairly easy to whip up a bookmarklet for this, or to list all the targeted links in all the ads.

This will convert all the adsense links on the page to "safe" clickable links without penalty

javascript:(function(){var k,x,t,i,j; for(k=0;x=document.links[k];k++){t=x.href.replace(/[%]3A/ig,':').replace(/[%]2f/ig,'/');i=t.lastIndexOf('http://');if(i>0){t=t.substring(i);j=t.indexOf('&');if(j>0)t=t.substring(0,j);x.href=unescape(t)} else if (x.onmouseover&&x.onmouseout){x.onmouseover(); if (window.status.indexOf('://')!=-1)x.href=window.status; x.onmouseout(); } x.onmouseover=null; x.onmouseout=null; }})();

make the above snippet into a favorite/bookmark and click on it while viewing the page with the adsense ads

[edited by: amznVibe at 11:15 pm (utc) on Dec. 13, 2003]

[hyperkik]

I still think that the best way to discern advertiser URL's and keywords is through the "Ads by Google" link - take a look at the URL from that link. (And there's no prohibition against clicking that link.)

[Imaster]

make the above snippet into a favorite/bookmark and click on it while viewing the page with the adsense ads

How do you exactly do that?

[jimbeetle]

>>If you mouseover the advert it shows you the url in the status bar

It shows the url the advertiser wants to show, not necessarily the actual one.

The url for 'go to domain.com' might actually be...

domain.click-url.net?blah=this&blah=that

...and lead to a landing page other than the site's index.

[amznVibe]

How do you exactly do that?

Unfortunately Brett's link system won't allow me to make complex links like that (for good security reasons probably) or this would be super easy

What you will have to do is make a new favorite out of any link, then find it on the menu and change its properties. Change the URL to the full text in the box I made above.

[Brett_Tabke]

> The system works great
> "safe" clickable links

There is no garantee of that. Just go look at some google serps and then study the js. See the click through counter? There is no indication that google is sending visitors to that url in or on adsense.

It is your site - your page - your system. Click away. Always check 'em. It is funny how often you will be surprised at where that click goes too. Misleading ads are everywhere.

The "dont' count my click" issue, is that of Googles - not yours. You are a site owner and 100% responsible for everything on your site.

[tombola]

Brett, read the threads on this forum:
Many people earn money from their Web site for the first time in their life.
Almost everybody is afraid to lose that income, to get the termination email from Google.

Why are you encouraging Adsense publishers to click their own ads?

Every Adsense publisher knows what the consequences are if he does that, so I guess nobody will follow your advice.

[Mario]

Brett has a point though. Those of us with permanent ips *should* be allowed to click on ads to see where they're going. Or at least given some webmastery way of doing so. Wouldn't it be great if all our advertisers and their urls showed up in our adsense stats?

[Blue_Fin]

The "dont' count my click" issue, is that of Googles - not yours. You are a site owner and 100% responsible for everything on your site.

This is very poor advice regardless of who owns what because it is an outright violation of the AdSense Terms and cause for termination. Or when someone does this and gets terminated, when they ask for forgiveness, should they say Brett Tabke who runs WebmasterWorld said it was OK to click on my AdSense ads?

[loanuniverse]

It is your site - your page - your system. Click away. Always check 'em. It is funny how often you will be surprised at where that click goes too. Misleading ads are everywhere.

The "dont' count my click" issue, is that of Googles - not yours. You are a site owner and 100% responsible for everything on your site.

Please do not follow this advice. This became your issue when you agreed to the TOS. If you click in the ads, Google will have the right to drop you. The agreement is between you and Google, and you can only hold Google to it, if you have adhered to the deal yourself.

Use the techniques shown here or the js code posted if you are technical enough to understand what it does {not my case :( }

[amznVibe]

By the way the code snippet above works in all major browsers, not just IE.

[Chndru]

Though Brett is trying to tell G to filter the sites from the publisher's ip, TOS says what publishers can do and not do.

>It is your site - your page - your system. Click away. Always check 'em
Simply, the worst advice that i have read in WebmasterWorld, in the perspective of publishers, and the current limitions of Adsense program.