What is the "nm" for in Google Adsense links?

[internetheaven]

Just noticed that whenever I hover over an Adsense ad on my page, the &nm= part of the URl goes up by varying jumps.

I've been doing a lot of coding work on one of my sites today so I've been re-viewing some pages over and over in various browsers. I obviously don't click my own ads, but I noticed that the advertiser's URl was changing as I passed over it.

An image banner seems to go up in +1s e.g. &nm=1, &nm=2, &nm=3 etc.

But text banners go up in strange jumps e.g. &nm=2, &nm=7, &nm=9, &nm=16 etc.

What is nm for? If I'm passing over my ads several times whilst checking things, does Google mark it as not-relevant and drops the ad? If I have an ad in a place where people are going to cross their mouse over it on the way to another part of the page, is that going to affect what ads are shown?

[netmeg]

What is nm for?

netmeg?

never mind.

[internetheaven]

Google Adsense support has finally got back to me. Apparently people passing their mouse over an ad more than once DOES affect my account and the adverts ...

... but as usual, Google can't tell me why or what effect that is.

[Leosghost]

no money

Google Adsense support has finally got back to me. Apparently people passing their mouse over an ad more than once DOES affect my account and the adverts ...

... but as usual, Google can't tell me why or what effect that is.

Very interesting confirmation of something ( amongst others ) I have long thought was happening..

If they told you why..and what..they'd really be letting at least a quarter of the cat out of the bag in front of too many people..Once you know what the watcher is watching, and what they do with what they see..you can choose ways to influence what visitors do, what signals you would like to try to influence them to send..if I were G..I would not have confirmed this ..

[lucy24]

new mouseover :)

I once had an area in a game involving things that abbreviated to {adjective in f-- + noun in b--}. Joke on the programming language used, though today it would bring up different associations.

[JCKline]

Interesting...
It could be for not only G determining a click value, but also give the AdWords user info on ad effectiveness (Rollover but no click). And there's the click fraud measurement, etc. Just a guess...not enough to get gaged and picked up in the middle of the night by the G-force...I hope. ;)

[brotherhood of LAN]

Try using Firebug's "Net" panel and see if/when traffic gets sent to G servers upon mouseover

fwiw I think they do it with the top result on organic searches too, but I never bothered to confirm it.

[netmeg]

I wonder if there's something in place for fingers swiping on smartphones and tablets, too.

[internetheaven]

And there's the click fraud measurement, etc. Just a guess...not enough to get gaged and picked up in the middle of the night by the G-force...

How would multiple mouseovers before a click (or without a click?) indicate fraud?