AdWords problems?

[bcc1234]

I see ads with missing "http" in the links part, so they end up being redirected to
google.com/.../www.somesite.com

Anybody else seeing this or is it just me?

[spanky316]

I have also been noticing strange things with the ads, not quite the same thing though. For some reason the ads on the right-hand side appear without the title-links so that they cannot be clicked. The only way to go to the websites is by copying and pasting the urls into your address bar. The titles for the top 2 positions also suffer from the same problem, although the whole ad area is a link so it is not such a serious issue for these positions. I'm rather worried that potential customers may experience the same problems and not neccessarily have the knowledge (or can be bothered) to copy and paste the links, therefore the ads are completely useless.
This all seems to be intermittent though, and has been occurring more and more frequently over the last 2 weeks.
Sorry this is slightly off-topic from the first post, but the problem seems to be along similar lines, although not the same, and I'm hoping that someone may be able to shed some light on this.

[AdWordsAdvisor]

For some reason the ads on the right-hand side appear without the title-links so that they cannot be clicked.

Welcome to WebmasterWorld, spanky316!

This is a topic that has come up several times in this Forum, so a site search would likely find you more details.

Most likely, though, the reason that you're not seeing clickable titles on some ads has to do with recently installed (or recently updated) Internet Security software on your computer(s).

You may want to look into the settings for the program you are using, or perhaps contact their customer support team for advice on how to reset things so that the clickable headlines are not stripped out.

AWA

[AdWordsAdvisor]

I see ads with missing "http" in the links part, so they end up being redirected to
google.com/.../www.somesite.com

bcc1234, I'm not really sure what you mean in the above quote. Could you provide a bit more detail?

If you mean that the 'Display URL' (i.e. the fourth line of an ad) does not include the 'http', that is OK - and should not affect the site to which the ad links.

This is because the 'Display URL' is just a 'stand-in' for the actual address of the correct page on the site, which is often much longer. The actual address of the page, to which a user is sent when they click on an ad, is the 'Destination URL' that each advertiser submits when creating an ad.

I think this may answer your question, but if not, more info would be helpful. ;)

AWA

[spanky316]

Great, thanks for that. I kind of suspected it could be something to do with the security software as we recently installed SP2 and it automatically iniated the built-in XP security software (we usually use Nortons). I should be able to configure it all easy enough - I was just worried in case it may be a fault with the adwords themselves. The only problem left is how many potential customers have recently installed SP2 and are also expereincing this problem? We don't seem to be losing any custom, and our daily clicks seem to be fairly constant as normal. Anything like that is always a worry though.
Thanks for responding so quickly.

[GAds]

I think it may have been caused by Norton anti-virus software.

[spanky316]

Thanks GAds, I'll get that one checked out. Hopefully you are right. I was just worried that SP2 could have caused it. Incidentally, I've heard several people moaning about SP2 (a bit off-topic here though!)