Good point! Have you tried emailing adsense and posing this question. For me, I find the preview tool as god as useless. I think this is going to be the next bane for everyone - urls that are so long you cannot see the whole thing unles you click it, which we obviously can't do! Another reason for adsense to put a blocker on our own clicks on adverts - that way we could quickly and easily view and stop adverts we don't want!

Can't you "copy url" to your clipboard and then use that to paste into the browser?

I found out that you can do that on the Mac, I'm sure that the PC can do the same thing.

Mike

There is an option that if you right click the ad, you can select "copy shortcut," and then paste into a new browser window to get the fqdn without all the fluff..

if you right click the ad, you can select "copy shortcut,"

But remember that this will lead to false positives from some click trackers.

How can it lead to a false positive? All your doing is getting the properties of an object. Just like getting the properties of a file, it doesn't change the modified date on it. So If you look at the source of the page, is that going to lead to a false positive as well? Because basically the copy shortcut is just a small snippet of code being query'd.

If it's a redirect, then it may be against adwords TOS.

Redirect URLs: Ads that contain Display URLs that automatically redirect to the parent company.
Bridge Pages: Ads for webpages that act as an intermediary, whose sole purpose is to link or redirect traffic to the parent company.

Also, the advertiser cannot display the URL as you say they are:-

Display URL Must be Accurate
Your Display URL must accurately reflect the URL of your website. If your actual Destination URL link is too long for your ad, use a shortened version (such as your homepage) that meets the character limit for this field.
The Display URL field cannot be used as another line of ad text.
Your Display URL must include the domain extension, for example: .co.uk, .net or .org.
Example:
Destination URL: [shoesforsale.com...]
Display URL: www.shoesforsale.com

I copy the url and notify adwords via the ads by goooooogle link. I've seen some zapped shortly afterwards.

Can't you just float the mouse pointer over the link in the ad and read it off the bottom of the Window? Works in IE, not Firefox, though that may just be a question of settings for me. Also, make sure you use a mouse and not a laptop touchpad or you could end up clicking an ad by mistake. I hold the mouse by the sides with no finger on the button, just to be sure!

That is true, as long as they have their View>Status bar selected.

If you use Firefox, place your mouse over the link, right click, copy link location, and then paste it into notepad.

You guys got more faith in your left brains than I do:-) I'm afraid of right-click means life and left-click means death procedures, my fingers don't always obey my brain.

Whilst you may be able to see the URL by looking in the bottom pane, copying and pasting it to a new window etc. The bottom line here is that the advertiser is NOT ALLOWED by the adwords TOS to show the url in this manner.

Adwords support do tend to act on complaints about ads, so I'd encourage you to report the ad rather than try to add it to your filter. You only have 200 url's in the filter, but reporting blatant tos violators to Adwords is unlimited AND it is more successful in removing that ad IMHO.

Whilst you may be able to see the URL by looking in the bottom pane, copying and pasting it to a new window etc.

I'm not sure I understand. I don't recall ever seeing an Adwords ad where floating the mouse over the ad wouldn't show the target URL. Just for grins, I just went to Google, googled "car", and every ad displayed on the Google site showed the target URL on floating the mouse. Are we talking about the same thing?

Are we talking about the same thing?

works in IE not in FF.

How can it lead to a false positive?

[webmasterworld.com...]

q.e.d.

I wrote about something similar:

[webmasterworld.com...]

How can it lead to a false positive?

[webmasterworld.com...]

q.e.d.

I'm glad I saw that.. looks like general navigation through out the site and javascript on a page will generate false clicks using that software as well. At that point right-clicking would be that least of my concern for false positives...

I did email Google and they said to right click on the Title and copy the link location and paste it into Notepad. You end up with a huge long link 3 or 4 lines long. Near the end of the coding there is a URL. You then copy that URL from the link in Notepad and use that to check out the advertiser.

It works, but it's slow and cumbersome. Wouldn't it be great if us publishers could have our IP addresses coded into the Adsense system so that we could click on links all the time and it wouldn't count our clicks and it wouldn't violate TOS?

Wouldn't it be great if us publishers could have our IP addresses coded into the Adsense system so that we could click on links all the time and it wouldn't count our clicks and it wouldn't violate TOS?

Try searching for "myip javascript" ... Usually from being tired and in a hurry switching focus between the editor and the browser I have on occasion clicked on one of my own ads. Each time it happened I reported myself and literally begged Adsense support for something like what you described.