Google Ads and Links

Top Link versus Bottom Link

[WolfLover]

Ok, when I hover my mouse over the ads on my site, (I am using both 728x90 and 336x280 ads) I notice a difference. I was using Opera when I noticed this.

When I hover over the top link of an ad (the TITLE link), it shows the usual googleads.g.doubleclick.net blah blah blah link. When I hover over the bottom link of an ad (the URL link), it shows just the url such as example.com which to me makes it appear that if a website visitor clicks on the bottom URL link that we may not be getting credit for those clicks? I don't know, but that is what it looks like to me. Why would it be two different links when you hover your mouse over it?

The reason I was looking at this is because over the past few months, my earnings are about half or less than half what I made just last year, yet my traffic is up. Natural traffic, I have no ads of my own out there, just have some sites that have become more popular.

So, my traffic is up, my CTR and eCPM is way down. If the bottom URL link is not giving us credit, that would make my lower earnings make sense.

[dHex]

This is the code for individual ads in google's ad blocks. There is only one direct link on the title. The lower url only reports "mouse down" and "mouse click" events to JS script which ultimately send the user to the destination link via doubleclick.net. So you still get credit for the click.

<li id=taw0 onfocus="ss('','aw0')" onmouseover="ss('','aw0')" >
<div class=ad>
<table class=adc cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0>
<tr>
<td valign=middle>
<a class=adt href="http://googleads.g.doubleclick.net&adurl=http://www.example.com" id=aw0 onclick="ha('aw0')" onfocus="ss('','aw0')" onmousedown="st('aw0')" onmouseover="return ss('','aw0')" target=_blank>
<span>ad title</span>
</a>
<div class=adb>ad description </div>
<div class=adu>
<span class=adus id=uaw0 onclick=ga(this,event) onmousedown=st(this.id.substr(1))>www.example.com</span>
</div>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</div>
</li>

[incrediBILL]

You see the URL when you hover because that's what the title attribute of the <a> tag does, which is being used for those URLs.

Look at the source: <a href="..." title="hovering url">

So that's why you're seeing it, standard browser behavior 101, you're getting full credits.

[WolfLover]

Ok, thanks for the info. Just trying to figure out why the CTR has dropped so much and I guess that is not the reason!

[koan]

Just trying to figure out why the CTR has dropped so much

You're not alone, we're trying too:

[webmasterworld.com...]