How to check competitors' landing pages?

[Rehan]

I used to check landing pages of other ads using the Sponsored Links results, but ever since Google changed the behavior of the Sponsored Links search [webmasterworld.com] I can no longer do that.

So I emailed the AdWords folks to ask how landing pages can be checked, and I was told that the only way to do so is by copying the display URL and loading that in the browser. But checking the display URL is not very useful because the full destination URL is very often different from the display URL. And going to google.com/search?q=keyword and just clicking on the ad there is of course not recommended because it accrues impressions and click costs for the other advertisers.

I know that there are a couple of other ways you can get to the actual landing page without affecting the competitors' costs... For example:

1) Get the link from the ad title at google.com/search?q=keyword and manually extract the destination URL ... But this is cumbersome (especially if it requires urldecoding) and it still adds to the impression counts

2) Search for parts of the ad text using the new Sponsored Links Search (i.e., the "Ad Search feature") and hope that the ad appears. But I've found that some ads simply do not appear there even if I search for very specific add text.

Neither of these options is all that great, though.

Is there any better way to do this?

[jimbeetle]

You can give the AdSense Preview Tool a try.

[google.com...]

[Rehan]

Thanks... I guess that may work for the content network. But I'm interested specifically in the ads shown on Google.com.

[wrgvt]

If you're using Firefox, you can right click on the ad link and then select Copy Link Location. Paste that into something like Notetab and you can see the full link URL.

[Rehan]

^^ Yeah, that's basically what I was referring to in my method #1 above. I was hoping there was something more straightforward though.