Affiliates using deliberately fake destination URLs

Too much for Google to handle?

[robertskelton]

Since day one of the new affiliate policy (only one ad per destination URL per keyword), there has been a simple trick used by some naughty affiliate marketers:

Enter a false destination URL - that is, what appears in the ad is not where it goes.

Sometimes it is blatant, nothing like where it ends up. Sometimes it is sneaky, with a v instead of a w, or a .net instead of a .com, and so on...

Regardless, the big problem for those of use who are following the rules like good little advertisers, is that they are getting away with it. It appears that to stop this practice requires manual checking, and the Adwords team are either not doing it, only randomly doing it, or cannot keep up.

Rob.

[FromRocky]

Enter a false destination URL - that is, what appears in the ad is not where it goes.

Do you mean a false display URL? I don't see what will be gained of a false destination except you can throw the money away.

[HughMungus]

Huh? Google is keying on display URL's instead of parsing destination URL's? You're kidding me, right? How hard is it to simply parse a destination URL down to its domain name and key on that?

[Rachel]

Can they parse one of those weird CJ affiliate link URLs?

[robertskelton]

I meant display URL :)

[HughMungus]

Can they parse one of those weird CJ affiliate link URLs?

Sure they can. Can they figure out where a link really leads to? I can using PHP. Why can't they?

[Rachel]

HughMungus: Sure they can. Can they figure out where a link really leads to? I can using PHP. Why can't they?

Thanks for that info, Hugh. I know just enough about pHp to run my osC cart, so I didn't even realize you could use it for something like that.

I'm glad to know, though. There's only one other affiliate that promotes the same company for my keywords, so I'd (selfishly) hate for others to sneak in. :)

[inasisi]

I did see a couple of such instances of wrong display URL and reported it to Adwords Support and they promptly removed them. Why don't you do the same?