Do you want to find out who is advertising on your site via Google AdSense? As you should already be aware, you are not permitted to click on your own ads, so how do you find out who those advertisers are?
This article will show you an easy way of identifying the URL behind each ad being served on your site through Google AdSense, without you breaking their terms of service.
Step One : Identify the advertisement
Find the advertisement that you want to find the URL for, and right-click on the text link.
Step Two : Copy the link location
When you right click on the ad you want the URL for, select the option ‘Copy Link Location’ or ‘Copy Shortcut’.
Step Three : Paste and identify the URL
Open a text editor and paste the URL. Then do a search for the text ‘adurl’. When the result appears, you will see the URL of the advertiser appear after the search text.
In this example, we can see that the URL of the advertiser is ‘http://ads.glispa.com/z/2343/CD111/’, which directs to the website ‘American Singles’.
Why do you want to know who is advertising on your site?
You may not want to be advertising certain sites that are currently being displayed; you can use this technique to find out just what ads you are serving, and block them should you so wish.
You may also want to directly approach the sites advertising on your sites to negotiate a direct advertising deal – this can be more profitable for both yourself and the advertiser.
Alternatively, you may simply be curious to see what sites you are advertising.
You should always be aware of the content on your site – your ads are no different.
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it’s so simple yet I never thought to do this! lol. Thank you
I’ve though about doing it, yet didn’t see the point… I guess it’s a good thing to know what you’re advertising though
Good article. Sometimes I’m just plain curious to visit an advertisers website and although their URL sometimes features in the ad, this technique will save having to type out their website addresses. Especially useful for those who have long URLs!
Martin a better way to find this out is by using the google adsense preview tool, since you can not copy URLs in case the advertisement is flash based. I had written about this a while back http://www.contentpays.info/blocking-irrelevant-ads-in-google-adsense/
Goddess Carlie – Thanks for your comment! I am glad the article was useful for you
Tim – I think it is always important to know who is advertising on your site. What if one of your advertisers was a direct competitor, or contained content you would not want to advertise?
John Lampard – Welcome to the blog and thanks for your comment. It’s good to always remain curious and always be aware of the sites advertising on your website.
Yogesh – As far as I am aware none of the text ads used by AdSense are flash based, although I accept that some of the graphical ones are – in which case the tool you wrote about is a good alternative for discovering the URL of advertisers.
Thanks for commenting and providing the link
came across this blog from dosh dosh, thanks for your article and to Yogesh as well
i’ve done this exact same thing, copy and paste the google ad code. it’s how you can check your competitors’ ads as well (if you’re an advertiser).
Zaki – Welcome to the blog; I am glad this article was of use to you and look forward to reading more of your comments in the future.
Ms Danielle – Thanks for your comment; glad to see you are one of those who is always curious to know who your advertisers and competitors are.
Martin, great article! I, too, found your blog through Maki’s link and I’m glad I did. Thanks!
Hi Ray – welcome to the blog, I am glad the article was of use to you
I’ve done this, too. I really wanted to see a site that came up and nearly clicked on the ad without thinking. Stopped myself just in time and right clicked instead.
What I was hoping this post was about was some yet undiscovered reporting tool that gave me a list of all the advitisers that my visitors had clicked on. Now _that_ would be handy.
Michelle
Michelle – Now that would be useful, eh? Somehow I doubt Google would ever show us those statistics for fear we would cut private ad deals with our best advertisers!
You should be able to get a good idea of the ads your visitors are clicking on though, by setting up channels for your ads (set up a channel for each page, perhaps) and keeping an eye on who is advertising on your site each day.
When you compare your daily revenue to the ads you are seeing on that day, you can get a good idea of the ads your visitors are clicking on.
To be honest, we’ve moved away from Google AdSense and on to working directly with the advertisers. Right now, we’re enjoying a direct affiliation with EVE Online – and it’s working very well!
Eric – You give a good example of the benefits of advertising relevant sites to your audience. I am not surprised that your affiliation with EVE Online is proving to be more profitable than AdSense as you are simply making your visitors aware of a site/service they are likely to already be interested in.
Google now has a new section where you can review direct campaigns on your site and accept or reject advertisers. This is great, but they still don’t disclose what you (or they) are making from the placements.
They have continually promised this to their publishers.
Taylor – I didn’t even know Google had made such a promise; I can’t see them ever revealing such information as it has the potential to damage their revenues as publishers defect and try to get better deals elsewhere.
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