Help me decrypt this...

[W1NN1NG]

I'm trying to reverse engineer how to cloak in adwords, as I see people are doing it successfully. Please help me fill in the missing piece...

The display URL is http://www.rootdomain.com, which looks like a legit site when you go to it, with articles, navigation, contact us, etc...

However when you click on the Adwords ad it takes you to a flog/farticle with a http://www.rootdomain.com/secretpage.php.

Question is, how is this being done without the Adwords team seeing it? Are they simply putting http://www.rootdomain.com/secretpage.php as the destination URL and making it look legit so it gets approved, then swapping it out for the flog/farticle after the fact?

 

[eliquid]

oh man, you are starting from zero arent you with cloaking?

 

[W1NN1NG]

oh man, you are starting from zero arent you with cloaking?

pretty much

 

[cheshire]

Doubt anyone is going to out their methods here on a public forum. I wish you luck though.

 

[rish3]

If it's within the same domain, it's not really "cloaking". Google's fine with it:

Display URLs are meant to give users a clear idea of what page they'll arrive at when they click an ad. For this reason, Google's policy is that both URLs be within the same website (meaning that they share the same domain).

(from support.google.com)

 

[CCarter]

 

[BlogHue]

You can pass variables to the URL using Google's Valuetrack system. You can then further utilize the parameters passed to display a particular landing page(s) using your server side language.

Using ValueTrack - AdWords Help

 

[JoseArmando]

Learn php.

 

[chief]

If it's within the same domain, it's not really "cloaking". Google's fine with it:



(from support.google.com)

This. You can just use the root as the display URL in Adwords even if your actual destination is something like domain.com/secret/folder/1/index.php. Same thing goes for subdomains.

 

[Mightier]

Think about the differences between a legitimate customer and someone snooping around your campaign. What differences will you see in their behavior? What methods can you use to potentially identify them before they reach your lander?