They do determine the path of a click.. it is integrated in their smart pricing algorythm.. I have an affiliate that offers free loans to first time borrowers... I have noticed when uses coming in from "free loans" the cost per click goes way down than if they came from the primary keyword "loans". I have channel tracking in place that places different channels on the page depending on the referrer (keyword user used to find my site). I have placed this channel on another page after a few days of tracking the smaller click and found that it only gives me smartpriced clicks when coming from that keyword and not the other page.
Well that's not the complete basis for what the publisher is paid. Some other factors that I believe influence the amount you get paid also include... 1) Smart Pricing 2) SERPS placement 3) PR 4) Type of site, Blog, Forum, html I am certain there is more to the payout algo than what will ever know. Threads like this really help understand more. Nice post, www.AmCy.org and very good discussion, devbistro and lonecrow. Cheers
I stand corrected, you can in fact get the referer on the client side. I just did a test. Umm live links not enabled yet so can't click this: http://lonecrow.net/ If you do the search below, (lonecrow.net site:lonecrow.net) the top item will be an entry for the home page of one of my sites. Clicking that link will load the page and client side script will show a dialog box with the referer information. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=lonecrow.net+site%3Alonecrow.net&btnG=Google+Search But that is still only one page back. Unless G is tracking user session and storing each hop for that user on the server side, they don't know previous sites visited. e.g. there is no document.refferer.refferer I think in the past when I tried this I must have typo'd. The server side variable is "refeRer" the javascript client side one is refeRRer. Kewl, now I have to think about how I can use this in my apps
If you enter this in your browsers address bar you can read G's code for yourself. Umm if you speak the lingo http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js
I agree, all of these probably influence the CPC, but I am not sure about what you mean by SERP's: are yo talking about G SERP's only or are you talking about the ranking in the SERP's of all the major engines? AmCy
Update: now I am certain that the referring URL influences my earnings. Both my googlesearch site and my adult friend finder site have experienced a sudden jump in the amount paid to me per click, and, for both sites, I have only recently been getting traffic from the big search engines. I also checked in AW and it appears that the average CPC for the targeted keywords hasn't changed, so I really think that the SE referrals are causing the jump in CPC. AmCy
AmCy, Shawn posted a thread about this some thime ago. I cannot seem to find it. He, too, suspected that organic SERPs may play a roll in payout amount.