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They don't. I've typo'd my destination URL and immediately got stopped because it didn't match the display URL. Definitely some trickery afoot.

by jraines 17y ago

axod 17y ago
They certainly do. It's extremely common, and perfectly within their guidelines. That's why they have 2 distinct fields, which are allowed to be on different domains. One reason is to allow ad-arbitrage, which is a massive part of adwords. (I used to do a fair bit of this). For example, you might want to show adverts that have the display URL of apple.com but actually go through an ad networks own url before they get there. Having the ad display a URL of an ad-network instead of apple.com would be very silly. You might also just want to put everything through your own jump script so you can count clicks yourself to ensure google is honest. From the adwords guidelines: "Your display URL must accurately reflect the URL of the website you're advertising. It should match the domain of your landing page so that users will know which site they'll be taken to when they click on your ad." The original ad here violates that requirement. But certainly allowing a different destination URL to display URL is pretty important for a lot of people who legitimately use adwords to drive traffic through ad-networks or jump scrtips etc.
- ElbertF 17y ago
  They may have had a 301 redirect to the real Mozilla website and changed it later, in case a Google employee would check the URL.
  - vaksel 17y ago
    it's usually a lot more involved than that, very often even after the site goes live, they still have the redirect in place, only it's limited to the ip range for Mountain View California.
    - gojomo 17y ago
      And I wonder: does Google staff its ad division with simpleminded trusting folk who just fell off the turnip truck? I have a friend who's reported blatant violations of the AdWords policies against (1) sending people to a page full of other ads; and (2) ultimate landing pages on very different domains than displayed. He's sent screenshots. I can trivially reproduce what he's reported from my home consumer DSL. But then after his report is forwarded around a bit at Google, he just gets the response back, "we don't see that." Gee, ya think maybe the scammers are identifying Google IPs and sending them what they want to see? Google even asked him for an outside proxy they could use for testing!

They don't. I've typo'd my destination URL and immediately got stopped because it didn't match the display URL. Definitely some trickery afoot.

by jraines 17y ago

They don't. I've typo'd my destination URL and immediately got stopped because it didn't match the display URL. Definitely some trickery afoot.

axod 17y ago

They certainly do. It's extremely common, and perfectly within their guidelines. That's why they have 2 distinct fields, which are allowed to be on different domains. One reason is to allow ad-arbitrage, which is a massive part of adwords. (I used to do a fair bit of this). For example, you might want to show adverts that have the display URL of apple.com but actually go through an ad networks own url before they get there. Having the ad display a URL of an ad-network instead of apple.com would be very silly. You might also just want to put everything through your own jump script so you can count clicks yourself to ensure google is honest. From the adwords guidelines: "Your display URL must accurately reflect the URL of the website you're advertising. It should match the domain of your landing page so that users will know which site they'll be taken to when they click on your ad." The original ad here violates that requirement. But certainly allowing a different destination URL to display URL is pretty important for a lot of people who legitimately use adwords to drive traffic through ad-networks or jump scrtips etc.

ElbertF 17y ago
They may have had a 301 redirect to the real Mozilla website and changed it later, in case a Google employee would check the URL.
- vaksel 17y ago
  it's usually a lot more involved than that, very often even after the site goes live, they still have the redirect in place, only it's limited to the ip range for Mountain View California.
  - gojomo 17y ago
    And I wonder: does Google staff its ad division with simpleminded trusting folk who just fell off the turnip truck? I have a friend who's reported blatant violations of the AdWords policies against (1) sending people to a page full of other ads; and (2) ultimate landing pages on very different domains than displayed. He's sent screenshots. I can trivially reproduce what he's reported from my home consumer DSL. But then after his report is forwarded around a bit at Google, he just gets the response back, "we don't see that." Gee, ya think maybe the scammers are identifying Google IPs and sending them what they want to see? Google even asked him for an outside proxy they could use for testing!