Does Google know source of visitor?

[Jon12345]

When someone clicks on an adsense advert, does Google have any way of knowing where that visitor came from?

[thegreatpretender]

Yes. There was a thread here before and people demonstrated how google tracks traffic source.

[crick]

They will have registered the users IP.

[Jon12345]

Maybe I wasn't too clear. What I mean is, can they tell where they came from regarding search engine, advert etc?

e.g. can they tell the visitor came from a Yahoo search or from a Yahoo PPC advert?

[jomaxx]

They can see the referrer info showing how the visitor got to your page. Not certain about the last part of your question, but normally the referring page would NOT tell them what kind of link was clicked.

FWIW, I wouldn't try to hide this info from Google in any way. They have other ways of figuring out what's happening on the Web, and they're known to be especially harsh with sites that try to run games on them using deceptive practices such as quick redirects.

[leadegroot]

Unless it is disabled on the visitor's computer, javascript can report what the previous page (the referer) was.
Adsense runs on javascript, so, yes, Google can know where your visitor to an adsense page came from in the large majority of cases.

[blairsp]

this would be a very easy thing to do for a company as great as google. I have an free counter on my site which lets me know the landing page on my site and clearly identifies the search engine used and what the term was, so for all the phd's and all seeing eye of google that probbaly happens in their sleep

[hal12b]

If a visitor on web site X clicked on a google ad, how would they know what web site they were on before web site X?

Basically, if somebody from bobswebsite clicked on a link and wound up on my web site, how would google have any reference to bobswebsite?

Just curious...

[jomaxx]

It's known by the Javascript that runs in order to display the AdSense block.

[frox]

The thing was discussed here:

[webmasterworld.com...]

In particular, see messages #14 , #22, #31, #32, #37 of that thread

[Demaestro]

Keep in mind that referrers can be spoofed as well as blocked.