When doing research for a campaign and landing page, do you click sponsored search listings to see others' landing pages? I was fine doing this until I found out how much front-page clicks for some keywords are worth. But you can't very well get around it because (1) the display URL's are almost always different than the destination URL's and (2) the destination URL's are cloak/redirected. Can you? Anyways. Advertisers shouldn't lose money as a direct result of my market research, am I right? So what are your thoughts on this?
I know I would not want someone wasting my money by doing "research" so I usually respect the owners and don't click them, unless I'm genuinely interested in the product shown.
I try to click on the URL first. But if it is not working, I have to click on the link. I don't like to do it, but there is no other way. It is a part of the Adwords Game..
"Research" clicks are a cost of doing business. These types of costs exist in just about every other marketing platform as well.
You should download the AdSense Preview Tool. Right click on a webpage and select the preview tool. You can then click on any of the preview ads without charging the advertiser.
Doing that still registers a click. Here's an example of a URL from a sponsored search listing http://www.google.com/pagead/iclk?s...=http://globalhealth.org/view_top.php3?id=228 And here's the source code for that link Those mouseover and mouseout functions only reference window.status In fact I think it's a possibility that copying one of those URL's and directing traffic at it could achieve harmful results... however the ai variable for a link changes for each impression so hopefully that prevents abuse. It would be nice to see whether clicks from different IP's are all still counted.
Yeah, but if you look closely, you'll see that the actual landing url is: http://globalhealth.org/view_top.php3?id=228 The landing url is always encoded in the HREF somewhere. However, if the merchant/advertiser is using a form of redirection/click tracking then their stats will be out of sync with Google's! Ah well. Also, every time you do your 'research', and assuming *your* ad shows as part of your research, you're harming your own CTR ... H
I didn't even notice that the destination address was on the end, thanks for pointing that out Good point! I hadn't thought of this... when last doing research, I was in the bidding but not yet bidding high enough to get on the first page...